Home Care in West Philadelphia and University City: What Families Should Know

West Philadelphia carries a unique mix: longtime Black and immigrant families who’ve
been in the neighborhood for generations alongside the university communities
clustered around Penn and Drexel. Both populations include families caring for aging or
disabled relatives at home — and both are underserved when it comes to awareness of
Medicaid-funded home care programs.

If your family lives in West Philly, Cobbs Creek, Overbrook, Haddington, or University
City, here’s what you should know about getting a family member paid to provide care.

The Same Programs, Different Community Context

Every Medicaid home care program available in Philadelphia applies in West
Philadelphia: Community HealthChoices, the OBRA Waiver, the Attendant Care Waiver,
and Participant-Directed Services with the Agency with Choice model. The application
process, eligibility rules, and pay rates are the same across the city.

What differs is how families encounter — or fail to encounter — these programs. West
Philadelphia has a strong network of community organizations, faith communities, and
neighborhood institutions. But those networks don’t always carry information about
Medicaid home care programs, because the programs themselves don’t do outreach
through those channels. The result: families providing intensive daily care in Cobbs
Creek or Overbrook may never hear about PDS unless someone specifically tells them.

What We See in West Philly

In Cobbs Creek and Haddington, we work with multigenerational Black families where
caregiving has been a family responsibility for decades. Grandmothers caring for
disabled adult children. Daughters who moved back home to care for aging mothers.
These families have deep caregiving experience but no formal recognition of the work
they do — and many have never considered that a Medicaid program would pay for it.

In our experience, when we connect with these families and explain how Participant-
Directed Services works, the response is almost universally the same: “Why didn’t
anyone tell us about this sooner?” That question is the reason CareChoice invests in
community-level engagement across West Philadelphia.

In University City and Spruce Hill, we see a different dynamic: faculty and staff families
caring for aging parents who live with them or nearby. These families often have health
insurance through their employer and assume Medicaid doesn’t apply to their parents.
But the parent’s eligibility is based on the parent’s income and assets — not the adult
child’s. An 80-year-old mother living on Social Security in her daughter’s University City
apartment may very well qualify for Medicaid home care, regardless of the daughter’s
salary.

Overbrook has a significant number of families with loved ones who have physical
disabilities — a natural fit for the OBRA Waiver and Attendant Care programs. These
families often include younger adults (30s–50s) who need attendant care integrated
into an active community life, not a clinical care model.

Local Resources

Philadelphia Corporation for Aging (PCA) at (215) 765-9040 is the citywide
resource, but they also partner with West Philadelphia senior centers and community
organizations.

West Philadelphia community health centers along Market Street, Lancaster
Avenue, and Baltimore Avenue serve many Medicaid-enrolled individuals and can
provide referrals.

Faith communities in West Philadelphia — particularly churches in Cobbs Creek,
Overbrook, and Haddington — are trusted information sources for many families.
CareChoice has presented at community health events hosted by West Philadelphia
congregations, and we’ve found that families who hear about these programs through
trusted community voices are more likely to follow through on the enrollment process.

Getting Started

Confirm Medicaid eligibility. Enroll in Community HealthChoices. Get assessed. Request
PDS. Get your family caregiver onboarded and paid.

CareChoice serves families across West Philadelphia — every neighborhood, every
community. If you’ve been caring for a loved one without compensation, the programs
exist. Let us help you find out if your family qualifies.

Contact CareChoice → Philadelphia team

Written by Gary Murray, Chief Marketing Officer | CareChoice Gary co-created
CareChoice’s community education strategy and leads the company’s family outreach
across five states.

Related: Get Paid to Care for Family in PA →| How CareChoice Helps Philly Families →