How To Recruit Host Home Providers (And Keep Them)
The quietest shortage in Texas IDD
Host home and companion care is the setting many families prefer and many providers cannot offer, because finding people willing to open their home to an adult with an intellectual or developmental disability is hard, and keeping them is harder. Most agencies recruit by word of mouth and the occasional flyer, which is why most agencies have a waiting list of individuals and no homes to place them in.
Who actually becomes a host home provider
Former direct support professionals who want to work from home. Retired teachers, nurses and aides. Families who already care for a relative with a disability and have room for one more. Church and community members who have met someone you serve. Almost all of them share one trait: they did not know the role existed until someone explained it. Your recruiting job is mostly explaining, clearly and honestly, in the places those people already are.
Write the page nobody else in your county has
Search "become a host home provider" with the name of almost any Texas county and you will find little or nothing from providers. A single well-written page on your website, kept current, will often be the only one in your area, and it will rank.
- What the role is, in one paragraph, without acronyms: you share your home and your daily life with an adult who needs support, and the agency supports you.
- What it pays and how: the monthly stipend range, that it is typically non-taxable as difficulty-of-care payments, what is reimbursed.
- Who qualifies: age, background check, home study, training, space requirements, the timeline from first call to first placement.
- What support you give: respite, nursing, behavioral support, 24-hour on-call, a named coordinator.
- The matching process, honestly: you do not have to say yes to the first match, and neither does the individual.
- A short form, three or four fields, and a phone number, not a twelve-page application.
Go where the people are
- Your own DSP staff and their families: the best host homes often come from people who already know the work.
- Churches and faith communities, which in most Texas counties are where caring adults with spare rooms gather every week.
- Local DSP and CNA training programs and community colleges.
- Parent and self-advocate groups, Special Olympics, and the LIDDA's own family events.
- Facebook groups for caregivers and foster and kinship families, with a plain post that links to your page.
- Your existing host home providers, with a referral thank-you that is real money rather than a gift card.
Keeping them is recruiting too
The fastest way to lose host homes is to disappear after the placement. Providers who keep their homes pay on time, answer the phone at night, deliver the respite they promised, give real training rather than a binder, and treat the host family as colleagues. Each of those is also what your current host homes will say when a neighbor asks them about the role, and that conversation is worth more than any advertisement.
A host home provider who feels supported recruits the next one for you. One who feels abandoned warns the next one off.
Measure it
Track inquiries, home studies started, homes approved and placements made, by month and by source. It takes ten minutes a month and it tells you which of the channels above is working in your county, because it varies more than you would expect.
Our IDD provider websites include a host home recruitment page and a DSP careers page with mobile apply as standard, because an unstaffed home is an empty home.
