Are home care agencies licensed in Manitoba?

No. Manitoba Health does not license private home care companies or agencies; they are required to meet the same business licensing and labour standards as any other business, but there is no health-specific licence for providing care in someone's home. This is different from personal care homes, which are licensed facilities and cannot legally operate without a licence. It is not a comfortable fact for an agency to publish, but you should know it: because there is no regulator setting a floor, the questions you ask about screening, insurance, training, and cover are doing the work that licensing would otherwise do.

What is the difference between an agency and a registry?

An agency takes on screening, scheduling, supervision, and responsibility for arranging cover, and you are not the employer. A registry introduces you to caregivers who are self-employed, after which the working relationship, and the employer obligations that come with it, are between you and that person. The distinction matters most when something goes wrong: with a registry, questions about liability, payroll, and finding cover at short notice tend to land on the family. Registry rates are usually lower, and that gap is essentially the price of the risk you are absorbing. Note that some agencies, including this one, engage a mix of employees and independent contractors, so ask any provider two plain questions: whether you would ever be the employer, and who is responsible for finding cover when a caregiver cannot attend.

Decision support

How to choose a home care agency in Winnipeg

The questions that actually separate a good agency from a poor one are not the ones most families think to ask.

Published August 6, 2026Updated August 6, 2026

What should you ask a home care agency first?

Ask what screening every caregiver goes through, whether the same caregiver will come each time, what happens when that person is sick, what the hourly rate and minimum visit are, and whether the agency carries liability insurance and bonding. Ask for specifics, not reassurance.

Notice what those questions have in common: each has a factual answer. "Are your caregivers good?" invites a yes from anybody. "What checks do you run, and how recently were they done on the person who would come to my mother?" does not.

Ask who to call at seven in the morning when a caregiver has not arrived, and who answers outside office hours. The answer tells you how the agency behaves on its worst days, which is when it matters.

How should caregivers be screened?

At minimum a criminal record check and an adult abuse registry check, verified references, and confirmation of any claimed certification. Ask how recent those checks are, how often they are repeated, and whether they were done by the agency or simply taken on the caregiver's word.

The adult abuse registry check is the one families do not know to ask about by name, and it is specifically relevant to vulnerable adults. An agency that does not mention it unprompted is worth pressing.

Ask about renewal, because a check done at hiring in 2019 tells you about 2019. Ask about references too: whether they were actually contacted, and whether they were previous employers rather than character references from friends.

Is the agency bonded and insured?

Ask directly, and ask for certificates rather than assurances. Liability insurance covers injury or damage arising from care in the home; bonding covers theft by an employee. Any established agency should be able to provide proof of both without hesitation.

This matters practically as well as legally. If a caregiver is injured lifting your father in an uninsured arrangement, or property goes missing, the question of who carries that risk becomes very real, and for a privately hired caregiver the answer is often the family.

A refusal or a delay in producing documentation is itself the answer. This is standard paperwork that any legitimate operator has to hand.

Will the same caregiver come each time?

Ask, and treat the answer as one of the most important in the conversation. Consistent assignment means the caregiver knows the person, the routine, and what normal looks like for them. Rotating staff means starting from nothing every visit, which for someone with dementia can be genuinely distressing.

Continuity is also a safety mechanism. A caregiver who has seen your mother twice a week for a year notices that she is quieter than usual, or steadier on the left than she was, and raises it. A stranger has no baseline to compare against and notices nothing.

Be realistic in what you ask for. Nobody can promise one single person for every shift across holidays and illness. What a good agency can promise is a small consistent team rather than whoever is free, and a plan for how new people are introduced.

What happens if a caregiver cannot make a shift?

This is the question that separates agencies, and it is the main practical advantage of an agency over a private hire. Ask what the cover process is, how quickly a replacement arrives, whether the replacement will have been briefed, and who calls you.

Illness and emergencies are certain rather than possible. What varies is whether that becomes the agency's problem or yours, and whether you find out by phone at six in the morning or by your mother phoning at ten to ask where everyone is.

Ask specifically whether cover is guaranteed for the shifts where absence would be dangerous, such as overnight or continuous care. Those are the hours where a no-show is not an inconvenience but a genuine risk.

What are the warning signs of a poor agency?

Vagueness on screening, cover, or price. Reluctance to provide insurance documentation. Pressure to sign quickly or to commit long-term. No written care plan. High caregiver turnover. And any agency that promises everything without ever mentioning a limitation.

Pressure is the clearest signal. Families making these decisions are usually stressed and short of time, and an operation that leans on that rather than easing it has told you how it treats people at their most vulnerable.

Turnover is worth asking about directly. Agencies that treat caregivers badly cannot retain them, and every departure lands on the client as another unfamiliar face. Ask how long the caregivers who would be assigned have been with the company.

Be a little wary of the pitch with no downsides in it. Every model of care has trade-offs, and an agency willing to tell you what it is not good at is generally being straight with you about the rest.

Agency or private hire: which is better?

Hiring privately usually costs less per hour. An agency handles screening, payroll, insurance, training, supervision, and cover for absence. Where private hire goes wrong is not the rate: it is the day the caregiver quits, gets ill, or an employment or liability question arises.

Hiring directly makes you an employer, with the obligations that carries, including payroll deductions and remittances, and the question of who is liable if the caregiver is injured in your parent's home. Families frequently discover this well after the arrangement has started.

Private hire genuinely works for some situations, particularly a small number of predictable hours with someone the family already knows and trusts. It works far less well for extensive care, for anything overnight, or where a gap in cover would be dangerous.

We are an agency, so weigh our view accordingly. The honest summary is that you are paying an agency for risk transfer and continuity rather than for the hours themselves, and whether that is worth it depends on how much it would cost you to absorb those risks yourself.