Resources · Monument, CO

How to choose a home care agency in Monument and the Tri-Lakes

Every town has a moment where a family starts comparing agencies, and in Monument that moment usually follows something specific: a hospital discharge, a diagnosis, a daughter in Denver who cannot be here every day, or a phone call from the Silver Key senior center suggesting it is time for more help. The comparison itself is the easy part. There is a short list of questions that separates agencies who have worked this valley from agencies whose website could describe anywhere, and the answers are checkable.

Two of those answers are local. The first is whether the agency knows the difference between the two UCHealth Memorial campuses, Memorial North down at 4050 Briargate Parkway with the emergency department that never closes, and Memorial Central on East Boulder Street downtown. The second is whether they know the ridge. The Tri-Lakes sit at 7,300 feet on the Palmer Divide, where the master plan describes cooler summers and colder winters than Denver or Colorado Springs with more rain and snow than either, and a company that has never had a caregiver cancel because of a snow day has not done this work here.

Everything else you should ask is standard, and we will answer it the same way we would ask it of anybody else. Colorado CareAssist is family-owned and does non-medical home care only, which is a narrower promise than most agencies make and the one we can keep. Our caregivers are trained for dementia and matched on skills and personality, our rate in the Tri-Lakes is $40 an hour, the shortest visit is three hours, and live-in care is $650 for a full day. We do not ask families to sign a long-term contract. Call (303) 757-1777 for a free twenty-minute call, then a free assessment at home or by video, with no obligation to hire anyone.

First, the licensing question

The first question to ask any agency you call is a licensing question: what license do you hold, who issues it, and can I see it. The answer should be quick and specific. An agency that cannot name the office that licenses it, or that answers vaguely, has already told you something.

Then ask what the license does and does not cover, because the word licensed frightens people into thinking clinical care is included. It is not. Non-medical means help with daily life: bathing, dressing, meals, medication reminders, light housekeeping, company. If a family needs wound care, injections or anything clinical, that work belongs to a home health or hospice agency, and any agency that blurs that line for you is doing you a disservice.

The contract, the minimum and the weather

Ask for the rate, the minimum visit and the contract in the same conversation, and ask what happens when the contract ends. Our terms here are $40 an hour, three hours minimum per visit, and live-in care at $650 for a day, with no long-term contract attached, so a family is agreeing to the care it needs this month rather than signing up for a year. Any agency that will not put its pricing in writing before the first visit is telling you something too.

Then ask the weather question, which sounds small in a warm month and matters enormously in January. Who covers a visit when the caregiver cannot travel? What happens if a road on the ridge is closed? At 7,300 feet the Tri-Lakes get more snow than Denver or Colorado Springs, and an agency that has never been up here in a storm will be guessing. The answer you want is a named backup and a phone that a human being picks up.

How they talk about the people who do the work

Ask how a caregiver is matched to a client. If the answer is a schedule sheet, keep asking. We train for dementia specifically, and we match on personality as well as skills, because the person who helps with the bath and the person the client will actually talk to are frequently not the same person, and a household runs better when the schedule accounts for that. Ask whether the same caregiver comes back, and what happens when one does.

Ask who answers the phone at night, and ask what the agency does about abuse or neglect. Then ask something that sounds small: does the agency know the county's programs, or only its own services? The Pikes Peak Area Agency on Aging lists Monument and Palmer Lake among the communities it serves, with Senior Information and Assistance at (719) 471-2096 and Older Americans Act programs free for adults over 60. Silver Key's Tri-Lakes senior center at (719) 884-2300 runs programming, meals and rides from Monument. An agency that can refer you to those is working alongside the county rather than around it.

What they know about getting around here

There is no fixed-route bus serving Monument or the Tri-Lakes. The county's mobility guide assigns the area to the senior-service transportation programs, and the practical result is that rides are booked, not boarded: Silver Key's vehicles through (719) 884-2300, Reserve and Ride's door-through-door service, and Envida Moves at (719) 633-4677 in Colorado Springs coordinating across El Paso and Teller counties. An agency that has never arranged a ride in this area may not know what your parent's actual appointment day looks like.

Ask the same about errands. The grocery geography here is specific: King Soopers and Natural Grocers on Baptist Road, the Walmart Supercenter out on Jackson Creek Parkway, Safeway on Highway 105, and Calvert's Mini Market in Palmer Lake for the smaller run, with Tri-Lakes Cares handing out an emergency grocery bag on North Jefferson Street with no enrollment at all. And ask what they know about winter caregiving here. The answer should mention the Divide, not the eastern plains.

The money questions, asked early

Ask what an hour costs, what a three-hour visit costs, what a live-in day costs, and what raises the bill. Then ask the harder one: if we cannot afford this at the rate you quote, what else do you know? Our answer, and it should be any agency's answer, is that we help families look at long-term care insurance and at what the county already funds for them, so the decision is made on real numbers rather than on a guess.

Ask who pays if a visit is cancelled, and what happens to the relationship if the agency is bought. We work inside the VA Community Care Network, so veteran families can ask us about that route, and we handle long-term care insurance paperwork with families rather than sending them to a portal alone. None of that is extra cost to you, and an agency that volunteers no resources when money is tight is going to be quiet when the bill comes.

Trust the specific answers

At the end of a comparison like this, the deciding factor is rarely the price. It is whether an agency gave you the name of a program you did not know existed, whether the person on the phone knew what weather does to this ridge, and whether the answer to your question was a place or a person rather than a brochure.

If you want a second opinion from someone with no stake in the sale, the county line at (719) 471-2096 will give you an unbiased read on what a family in Monument can get for free, and the Yellow Book, published nearly every year since 1967, is the directory to check against. Then call (303) 757-1777 and talk for twenty minutes about the situation as it actually is in your house. The assessment that follows is free, at home or by video, and carries no obligation to go ahead.

Local resources in Monument

The Tri-Lakes is the three-town area of Monument, Palmer Lake and Woodmoor, sitting between Denver and Colorado Springs along I-25 at the north edge of El Paso County, with Monument the largest of the three communities. Source
The Tri-Lakes sits on the Palmer Divide at 7,300 feet, where the master plan describes cooler summers and colder winters than Denver or Colorado Springs, with more rain and snow than either. Source
The Silver Key Tri-Lakes senior center in Monument (719-884-2300) is open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays with four to eight activities a day, a Connections Cafe hot lunch on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, rides to appointments and shopping, a home-modification program and case management; it relocated into a Monument church in 2025, so confirm the current address. Source
The Pikes Peak Area Agency on Aging lists Monument and Palmer Lake among the communities it serves, with Senior Information and Assistance at (719) 471-2096, and its Older Americans Act programs for adults over 60 are free. Source
There is no local fixed-route bus in Monument or the Tri-Lakes; the Pikes Peak AAA mobility guide assigns the area to the senior-service transportation programs, and Envida Moves (719) 633-4677 coordinates rides across El Paso and Teller counties alongside Silver Key and the Tri-Lakes services. Source
The Tri-Lakes grocery list places Safeway on Highway 105, Natural Grocers on Baptist Road and the Walmart Supercenter on Jackson Creek Parkway in Monument, with Calvert's Mini Market in Palmer Lake and King Soopers on Baptist Road. Source
Tri-Lakes Cares runs a Market and Pantry on North Jefferson Street in Monument where anyone can receive one emergency grocery bag with no enrollment, while enrolled households shop weekly for produce, dairy, meats and pantry staples. Source
The nearest large emergency department to the Tri-Lakes is UCHealth Memorial Hospital North at 4050 Briargate Parkway, Colorado Springs (719-364-5000), with emergency care open all day, every day, and UCHealth Memorial Hospital Central is at 1400 E. Boulder Street. Source
The Pikes Peak AAA Yellow Book has been published nearly every year since 1967 as the senior directory for El Paso, Park and Teller counties. Source

Families in Monument can start with a free in-home assessment, or read about home care in Monument.