Free Phone Counseling for Your Home Care Agency Caregivers
Seven percent of American adults went without mental health care last year over cost, per the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker. Your caregivers sit inside that number. A Section 125 wellness plan can put a licensed counselor on the phone for them at no charge, nights included, paid out of payroll tax your agency already sends the IRS.
Why you have never been pitched this
Type caregiver mental health into Google. Go look. Nearly every result on the first page is written for families looking after a parent at home, and almost none of it is written for the woman you pay to do that same work forty-eight weeks a year.
The gap is nobody's fault. Research money followed family caregiving because that population is enormous, and HR advice followed office employers because that is where the budgets live. A home care agency sits between them, employing people who do emotionally heavy work at median annual earnings just under $26,000 across the direct care workforce, per PHI's Key Facts 2025.
So the question never gets asked, and your caregivers absorb the hard weeks alone.
What happens when a caregiver calls?
She calls or opens an app and reaches a licensed counselor, usually within minutes. No referral. No appointment during her working hours, no drive to an office in a town where somebody might recognize her car, no bill afterward. Cost is what stops most people: 44 percent of insured adults who skipped needed mental health care said they could not afford it, KFF reported in December 2024.
| Without a plan | With the wellness plan | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per session | Out of pocket, in full | $0 |
| Wait to be seen | Days or weeks, business hours | Minutes, around the clock |
| Where it happens | An office, on her day off | Her phone, wherever she is |
| Privacy | A waiting room in her own town | Confidential, HIPAA covered |
My caregivers are part-time, though
Thirty hours is a group health carrier rule. It is not tax law. A Section 125 election is open to a W-2 employee regardless of hours, which is why it reaches a roster a traditional group plan will not touch. We laid the options side by side in what is actually possible for part-time caregivers.
You already ran these numbers
You priced a raise, and you priced a group plan, and both needed new money you do not have. Two dollars an hour on a thirty-hour caregiver runs $3,120 a year, plus 7.65 percent in employer FICA, which lands at $3,359 before anyone files a claim. Across forty that is $134,360. That is the margin.
A Section 125 wellness plan is funded from a different pocket. It redirects employer payroll tax you already pay instead of asking for new spend. CBIZ wrote the CPA opinion and HitesmanLaw the legal assurance; the detail is on our page on whether this is legitimate.
What it looks like in one household
Angela is fifty-two and works three days a week, split between your agency and one across town. In March she lost a client she had been with for two years. Paying a counselor out of pocket was never a line that would fit in a month that already does not balance, so she has gone without. Under the plan she books a phone session for eight on a Tuesday, after her last shift. It costs her nothing. She goes weekly for two months, then stops.
She did not quit in April. That is the part that shows up in your numbers.
Composite example, not an actual member.
Where this falls short
This is not health insurance. It is short-format and virtual, so a caregiver who needs sustained psychiatric care or regular in-person treatment will need more than a phone line, and should be told that plainly. What it removes is the price and the scheduling problem on the first conversation. For plenty of people that first one is the only one ever blocked.
What would this look like at your agency?
Two numbers answer it: how many caregivers, and roughly what they earn. That is the whole ask. The estimator takes those figures and shows what you pay in employer payroll tax now, what turnover at the industry median costs, and how much could be redirected into benefits your caregivers can use instead. Thirty seconds, no signup.
UnifyWell's published example nets an employer roughly $640 per participating employee per year on a $44,000 earner, after the monthly administration fee. Caregiver wages sit below that. Across our own proposals it has landed between $300 and $900. That is a range, not a quote. Only your own payroll says which caregivers qualify and what lands on each check, so have your CPA read the plan documents.
Open the estimator
Two inputs, thirty seconds, and a number for your own roster instead of somebody else's.
Free. No signup, and nothing to upload.
Home Care Wellness provides general information about Section 125 wellness plan structures and does not provide tax, legal or medical advice. A Section 125 wellness plan is not health insurance. Savings figures are estimates and depend on your own payroll, participation and plan design; results are not guaranteed. Counseling services described here are delivered by licensed third-party providers through the plan's telemedicine benefit. Consult your own CPA and benefits counsel before adopting any plan.
