Pre-presence training hours

Definition

California requires a home care aide to finish five hours of training before meeting any client.

Why It Matters

California sets five: two hours of orientation and three of safety, done before presence with a client, with five more each year. The federal seventy-five-hour rule is a different animal and reaches Medicare-certified home health and hospice aides, not a private-pay personal-care agency. The hours themselves are cheap and may be taken online. The constraint is that the aide cannot be with a client until they are done, so every hire carries a delay before it earns anything, and the records sit with the licensee, so an asset buyer re-documents training for every aide it re-hires.