Guide · Scope
In Florida: no. The homemaker & companion agency registration (about $50 to file) covers companionship and homemaker services only. Bathing, dressing and toileting are personal care, and personal care in Florida runs under a home health agency license — a different, heavier license with its own application and proof-of-financial-ability requirements. A companion agency whose aide bathes a client is, in the state's reading, operating an unlicensed home health agency.
The registration is cheap, fast and called an 'agency' credential, so it reads like permission. The exclusion lives in the scope definition, not in the marketing of the form. Families ask for bathing help in the first phone call — it is the most requested service in the business — so the pressure to say yes arrives on day one, priced and smiling.
Every state draws the hands-on line somewhere; Florida just draws it at a $50 registration, which makes the trap visible. Before you print a brochure, run your service list through the verdict checker: check the 'hands-on personal care' box and read the scope verdict for your state. If your license excludes it, your choices are the higher license, a partner agency, or turning the work away — in writing, in your policies, trained into your schedulers.
Dataset pages behind this guide: Florida state page · the full 50-state dataset (checked October 22, 2026).
Guides are general; verdicts are specific. The license checker applies your state's rules to your service mix, and the cost calculator prices your opening from the same dataset this guide cites.
The free checkers give you the verdict and the number. The Kit gives you the working papers: your state's application packet walked through in filing order, the policies-and-procedures binder spec (what your binder must contain — never a boilerplate binder), the administrator self-audit, the insurance & bond spec sheet, the Medicaid gate map, the franchise-vs-independent 10-year worksheets, and the payroll-runway planner.
$49 one-time payment
Included in the $49 HomeCareLicenseCheck Kit
