Five Years of Homecare Solutions: What Families Have Taught Us About Care

Jenna Hilchey, BScN RN CHPCN(C)

What this article covers

• Why Remember When HealthCare was founded on August 12, 2021

• How one family’s experience grew into services across Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island

• Five lessons clients, families, caregivers, and communities have taught us

• Why RWHC changed from “Homecare” to “HealthCare”

• How education and community connection became part of our work

• How to arrange nurse-led home care and nursing foot care in PEI

  
  

Why was Remember When HealthCare founded?

Remember When HealthCare began with a family who could not find the care someone they loved needed in rural Nova Scotia.

Ashley Myers-Boucher and Jeffrey Boucher experienced for themselves what many families still know too well: the need was real, but access was limited. Coverage gaps, waitlists, geography, and a system that was difficult to navigate left their family trying to solve a care problem that should not have been theirs to carry alone.

That experience became the reason behind Remember When Homecare (now HealthCare), founded on August 12, 2021. The idea was simple but demanding: people should be able to receive dependable, personalized support where they live, and families should not have to reach a breaking point before someone helps them understand their options.

On August 12, 2026, we mark five years. For us, the anniversary is a chance to consider what changed, what stayed the same, and what the people we serve have taught us.

The deepest lesson is this: families are rarely looking for a task to be completed. They are looking for relief, continuity, information, and a way to protect the life they recognize.

How did RWHC’s homecare solutions grow over five years?

This organization began as Remember When Homecare, helping older adults remain at home through personal care, companionship, meals, transportation, medication reminders, and household support.

Then the calls became more varied.

Families needed dementia care, overnight support, respite, and palliative care at home. People discharged after surgery needed temporary support or nursing. Adults living with disabilities needed care designed around their lives—not a program written only for seniors. Families also needed advanced foot care, in-home nursing care and help understanding how public, private, and community services fit together.

Our name changed from Remember When Homecare to Remember When HealthCare in January 2025 because the original name no longer represented the breadth of the work or the people receiving it. “HealthCare” made room for nursing, foot care, recovery, disability support, palliative care, education, and care navigation while keeping home at the centre.

Today, RWHC serves communities across Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Our team includes caregivers, CCAs, RNs, LPNs, foot care nurses, Community Care Managers, schedulers, hiring and human-resources staff, nurse educators, and office team members. Our services have grown, but the purpose remains rooted in the same family experience: reduce the burden, make care more understandable, and help people maintain choice and control.

What five lessons have families taught us about homecare solutions?

1. Care has to begin with listening

Two people can have the same diagnosis and need completely different support.

One person living with Parkinson’s disease may be most concerned about safe bathing. Another may care most about getting to a weekly community activity. One family managing dementia may need overnight reassurance; another may need a consistent afternoon routine so a spouse can rest. A person recovering from surgery may need private nursing, while someone else needs meals, laundry, and transportation for a few weeks.

This is why a checklist cannot be the whole care plan. A nurse-led assessment should ask what changed, what matters, what creates risk, and what the family can sustain.

Canadian research into person-centred home care in Nova Scotia and Manitoba found that relational care can create both practical and social benefits. It also showed that rigid policies can make it harder for workers to respond flexibly and build meaningful relationships (Spring et al., 2024). We see that tension in everyday care. Good structure protects clients and workers, but care still has to make room for the person.

Listening is not the warm-up before the “real work.” It is the work that makes every visit relevant.

2. Accepting help can protect independence

Families often call after someone has spent months refusing help because they fear losing control. That fear deserves respect. Home is private. Personal routines are intimate. Inviting care into that space can feel like admitting that life has crossed a line.

But independence is not the absence of support. It is the ability to make decisions, participate in daily life, and direct what happens to you.

Canadian researchers who interviewed home-care clients in Nova Scotia and Manitoba found that older adults receiving non-medical home support continued to do substantial work: advocating, coordinating, negotiating, adapting, and maintaining relationships. Their findings challenge the stereotype that receiving care makes someone passive or dependent (Kuryk et al., 2025).

We have learned to ask a different question. Instead of “What can we take over?” we ask, “What support would help you keep doing what matters?” Sometimes the answer is personal care. Sometimes it is a foot care nurse helping someone stay comfortable and mobile. Sometimes it is a caregiver preparing a meal alongside the client rather than for them. Sometimes it is reliable transportation that restores a social life.

The best homecare solutions expand choice.

3. Homecare is not only for seniors

One of the most persistent misconceptions is that a person must be elderly to receive in-home care.

People of many ages live with disabilities, chronic conditions, cancer, neurological disease, mobility limitations, or the temporary effects of surgery and injury. Parents may be supporting an adult child. A spouse in her fifties may be managing a partner’s personal care while working full time. A younger adult may need assistance with activities of daily living but want the same autonomy, privacy, relationships, and community participation as anyone else.

Canadian population research has documented widespread participation and activity limitations and inequities in access to healthcare providers (Wang et al., 2024). The lesson for home healthcare companies is not to fit disability into senior-focused language. It is to build accessible, personalized care plans for persons living with disabilities and to include the individual directly in decisions.

At RWHC, disability support can include personal care, meal preparation, mobility assistance, transportation, community outings, respite, overnight care, companionship, and private nursing. Care is needs-based, not age-based.

4. Consistency is not a small detail

Families remember how care feels when a new person arrives at the door. The client has to explain the routine again. A person living with dementia may become anxious. A private task must be taught to another stranger. A family caregiver wonders whether a small but important preference will be missed.

Continuity matters because familiarity holds information. A consistent caregiver notices that someone is quieter than usual, that the meal left untouched is unusual, or that getting out of a chair now takes more effort. The client does not have to start from the beginning at every visit. Trust has time to form.

Research following older home-care clients in Nova Scotia and Manitoba found that their pathways were influenced by changing functional needs, cognition, health instability, and caregiver distress. In the Nova Scotia group, clients entered public home care with higher levels of need, and caregiver distress was associated with transition to long-term care (Mitchell et al., 2023). No provider can promise that every transition will be prevented, but continuity and ongoing reassessment can help a team respond as needs evolve.

This is why scheduling, communication, and caregiver matching are part of care quality. Our scheduling team may work behind the scenes, but their decisions shape whether care feels predictable at the front door.

5. Families need education as much as they need services

Many calls to RWHC begin with a question rather than a request to book care.

How do we prepare the house? What should we ask before discharge? What is respite? Who pays for home care? What if we are waiting for public services? How do we talk to a parent who does not want help? Is foot care medical? Can someone support an adult living with a disability? What is the difference between a caregiver and a nurse?

Those questions led us to develop RWHC’s free Aging in Place Workshops. Community Care Manager Sarah Fox, BScN RN, brings the sessions into communities, helping older adults and families discuss home safety, support systems, hospital-to-home transitions, care options, and funding before a crisis. In spring 2026 alone, RWHC delivered 24 workshops in Nova Scotia and 28 across Prince Edward Island.

A recent Nova Scotia study found that older adults reported concerns across mental health, mobility, daily living, housing, and finances, yet help-seeking varied by the type of concern (Packer et al., 2026). Information matters because people cannot ask for a resource they do not know exists.

Education is not separate from care. It reduces fear, gives language to difficult conversations, and helps families make informed choices—even when they never become RWHC clients.

What has the RWHC team contributed to the first five years?

Ashley and Jeff turned their family’s experience into a commitment to serve other families. Jenna and Steph bring nursing judgment into assessments, education, and care planning. Community Care Managers help clients and families understand what is happening at home and keep plans responsive. Foot care nurses bring advanced and diabetic nursing foot care into the Bedford clinic, private homes, facilities, and communities across Nova Scotia and PEI. Caregivers and CCAs come in to clients' homes and turn a written plan into thousands of ordinary moments of reassurance.

This is healthcare that often happens quietly: a familiar knock at the door, a meal prepared the way someone likes it, a nurse explaining a treatment without rushing, a caregiver noticing a change, or a scheduler finding coverage so a family member can finally sleep.

Five years belongs to every person who made those moments possible.

Why does community work belong in an anniversary story?

RWHC was created because a gap in care affected a family. Giving back to communities is one way of remembering that origin.

Free workshops, Aging Your Way Expos, Ask the Nurse education, partnerships, and local events reflect a larger belief: people deserve useful information before they need paid care.

The social cause beneath our services is access. Rural geography should not make a family invisible. Disability should not exclude someone from the homecare conversation. A caregiver should not have to become unwell before respite is taken seriously. An older adult should not be treated as a collection of risks rather than a person with preferences, relationships, and a history.

We cannot solve every gap, but we can keep listening, sharing knowledge, partnering, and showing up.

What will guide the next five years?

Growth matters only if the reason behind it remains visible.

During the next five years, RWHC will continue strengthening nurse-led homecare solutions, nursing, foot care, disability support, consistency, and community education across Nova Scotia and PEI, and beyond to the other Atlantic provinces.

We also want families to feel comfortable calling earlier. Not every call needs to end in service. Sometimes the most helpful outcome is understanding which question to ask next.

If you are new to RWHC, our previous article, We Changed Our Name from Remember When Homecare to HealthCare—Here’s Why It Matters, explains why the change reflected more than branding.

Frequently asked questions about care in Prince Edward Island

How to arrange nurse-led home care in Prince Edward Island?

Contact Remember When HealthCare at 902-497-0722 or request a free in-home assessment. A nursing team member will discuss the person’s needs, routines, goals, location, and current supports. RWHC can then create a customized care plan and match appropriate caregivers or nurses. Services are available across PEI, including Charlottetown, Summerside, Montague, and surrounding communities. Learn more on the Home Care in PEI page.

How to get foot care for seniors in Prince Edward Island?

RWHC provides in-home advanced and diabetic nursing foot care across Prince Edward Island. Care is delivered by an RN or LPN with additional education in advanced and diabetic nursing foot care. Services may include a foot assessment, toenail trimming and filing, care for thickened or fungal nails, non-invasive ingrown toenail care, and corn or callus reduction within the nurse’s scope. Call 902-497-1697 to ask about availability in your community and book a visit.

A five-year thank-you

To the clients who welcomed us into their homes, the families who trusted us with difficult days, the employees who have carried our values into every visit, and the community partners who have shared their knowledge: thank you.

You have taught us that care is not only about doing. It is about noticing, explaining, respecting, and returning. It is helping family members become daughters, sons, spouses, parents, and friends again—not only caregivers.

On August 12, 2026, we celebrate five years of Remember When HealthCare. We are proud of how much has changed. We are even more grateful that the purpose has not.

You focus on being family. Let us focus on the care.

Summary

Remember When HealthCare was founded on August 12, 2021, after one family experienced the consequences of limited care access in rural Nova Scotia. Over five years, RWHC grew from home support into nurse-led homecare, private nursing, disability support, advanced foot care, education, and community programming across Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Families have taught us that care must begin with listening, support can protect independence, homecare is for more than seniors, consistency matters, and education can reduce the burden long before services begin.

References

Kuryk, K., Funk, L. M., Warner, G., Macdonald, M., Lobchuk, M., Rempel, J., Spring, L., & Keefe, J. (2025). Ageing in place with non-medical home support services need not translate into dependence. Ageing & Society, 45(3), 455–480. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0144686X23000478

Mitchell, L., Poss, J., MacDonald, M., Burke, R., & Keefe, J. M. (2023). Inter-provincial variation in older home care clients and their pathways: A population-based retrospective cohort study in Canada. BMC Geriatrics, 23, 389. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12877-023-04097-5

Packer, T. L., Chen, Y.-T., Boutilier, B., Askari, S., Moody, E., Wolfe, B., & Warner, G. (2026). Aging at home: Concerns of community-dwelling older people and their interest in seeking local resources and services. Canadian Journal on Aging, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0714980826100750

Spring, L., Funk, L., Kuryk, K., Warner, G., Macdonald, M., Burke, R., & Keefe, J. M. (2024). Person-centered home care: Exploring worker-client relationships using an intersectional and critical disability framework. Journal of Applied Gerontology, 43(1), 101–109. https://doi.org/10.1177/07334648231201837

Wang, D., Wong, J. J., Hogg-Johnson, S., Mior, S. A., & Côté, P. (2024). Characteristics and healthcare utilization of Canadians living with participation and activity limitations (2001–2010): A population-based cross-sectional study. Journal of Primary Care & Community Health, 15, 21501319241284971. https://doi.org/10.1177/21501319241284971