How to Get Paid to Care for a Family Member in NJ?

You can get paid to care for a family member in New Jersey through a handful of distinct programs, and the right one depends on your relative’s situation and yours. If your family member qualifies for Medicaid long-term care, the Personal Preference Program lets them hire you directly. If their income or assets are too high for Medicaid, Jersey Assistance for Community Caregiving (JACC) covers a middle tier. Veterans have two federal programs of their own. And if you already have a job and just need paid time off to provide care, New Jersey’s Family Leave Insurance replaces part of your wages for up to 12 weeks.

Each path pays differently, has its own eligibility rules, and starts with a different phone call. Here’s how they work.

Personal Preference Program: The Main Medicaid Path

The Personal Preference Program (PPP) sits inside New Jersey’s Managed Long-Term Services and Supports (MLTSS), which delivers long-term care benefits through NJ FamilyCare.¹ PPP is the self-directed option: the care recipient (or their authorized representative) receives a monthly cash budget and chooses who provides their care. That can be an adult child, sibling, spouse, grandchild, niece, nephew, or someone else the recipient trusts.²

As of January 2026, the budget is calculated using a personal care assistant reimbursement rate of $20.40 per hour. What the caregiver actually earns is set by the care recipient, and must land between New Jersey’s minimum wage of $15.92 and a cap of $25 per hour. For someone authorized at 25 hours of care per week, the monthly cash grant comes to roughly $1,932.³

A fiscal intermediary, Public Partnerships LLC, handles the payroll side: cutting your paychecks, withholding taxes, and managing the monthly deposits. You don’t have to run payroll yourself.⁴

Jersey Assistance for Community Caregiving

JACC is a state-funded program that operates outside Medicaid, which is exactly why it matters: the income and asset limits are more generous. It’s for New Jersey residents aged 60 and older who need a nursing-facility level of care but want to stay at home, and it lets participants hire their own providers, family members included.⁵

Using the most recently published (2025) figures, an individual can qualify with monthly income up to $4,760 and countable assets of $40,000 or less. A married couple can have up to $6,433 in income and $60,000 in assets. If your family member’s finances put them just over Medicaid’s line, JACC is the first place to look. One catch: participants can’t be enrolled in certain other state-funded programs at the same time.

VA Programs If Your Family Member Is a Veteran

Two federal programs pay family caregivers of eligible veterans.

The Program of Comprehensive Assistance for Family Caregivers (PCAFC) pays a monthly stipend directly to the primary caregiver. The amount is tied to the federal GS-4, Step 1 pay scale for your locality, and the stipend is either 62.5% or 100% of that monthly rate depending on the veteran’s care needs. Primary caregivers may also receive health insurance, mental health services, and respite care.⁶⁷

Veteran Directed Care works more like PPP. The VA authorizes a monthly flexible spending budget based on the veteran’s assessed needs, and the veteran uses it to hire caregivers, including spouses and other family members. A financial management service handles paychecks and tax withholding.⁸ For either program, the social work department at your nearest VA Medical Center is the starting point.

NJ Family Leave Insurance Is Different

Family Leave Insurance (FLI) doesn’t pay you to be a caregiver. It replaces part of your wages when you take time off your regular job to care for a seriously ill family member. It’s funded through payroll deductions, similar to unemployment insurance. In 2026, the maximum weekly benefit is $1,119, and benefits run up to 12 consecutive weeks in a 12-month period.⁹

A significant expansion takes effect July 17, 2026. The current threshold is 12 months of employment and 1,000 hours worked; after that date, you’ll only need three months of employment and 250 hours in the previous 12 months. The program uses a broad definition of “family member” that includes people who are the equivalent of family.

You can apply online at myleavebenefits.nj.gov, which is the fastest route, or file paper Form FL-1 by mail or fax. Your family member’s medical provider submits documentation supporting the need for care.¹⁰ FLI can be combined with the paid-caregiver programs above in some situations, since it addresses a different problem: lost wages from your existing job.

Who Qualifies for the Paid-Caregiver Programs

MLTSS/PPP and JACC both require the care recipient to meet a clinical standard and a financial standard.

Clinically, the person needs a nursing-facility level of care. In practical terms, they must need hands-on help with at least three activities of daily living, such as bathing, dressing, toileting, moving around, transferring in and out of bed, and eating. Cognitive impairments that require constant supervision and prompting with three or more of those activities also qualify.¹ A state-approved assessor confirms this in person.

Financially, MLTSS is strict. For a single applicant in 2026, countable assets can’t exceed $2,000, and the applicant’s home and primary vehicle don’t count. Monthly income must be under $2,982; if it’s higher, a Qualified Income Trust can preserve eligibility.¹¹ JACC’s ceilings, listed above, are much higher. VA programs don’t use these financial tests; they look at the veteran’s service-connected disability and care needs.

What’s Required of You as the Caregiver

Being hired as a paid family caregiver is a real employment relationship with a few gatekeepers.

Background checks are mandatory. New Jersey requires State Police and FBI criminal history reviews for personal care assistants, and certain convictions can disqualify you.¹²

Age rules vary by program. Some programs don’t set a minimum age for the caregiver; others, such as the Statewide Respite Care Program, require both caregiver and care recipient to be at least 18. PPP lets the recipient hire whoever they’re comfortable with, as long as that person clears the background check and can do the work.⁴

Training depends on the tasks. Basic personal care assistance (bathing, dressing, meals) doesn’t always require formal certification. Tasks that need medical training may require you to be certified as a Home Health Aide or Certified Nursing Assistant, with mandated training hours and ongoing education.

How to Apply

Where you start depends on the program:

MLTSS and PPP for care recipients age 21 and older: contact your local County Area Agency on Aging or Aging and Disability Resource Connection. If your family member already has NJ FamilyCare, contact their Managed Care Organization directly to request a functional assessment.¹
MLTSS from birth through age 20: contact the Division of Disabilities Services at 1-888-285-3036.
JACC: contact your County Area Agency on Aging to be screened.
Family Leave Insurance: apply online at myleavebenefits.nj.gov or file Form FL-1 by mail or fax.¹⁰
VA programs: contact the social work department at your nearest VA Medical Center.

For MLTSS or JACC, state-approved assessors conduct an in-person evaluation once you’ve made contact. The application then goes through the County Social Service Agency for final review. Expect several weeks, longer if documentation is incomplete.

How Caregiver Pay Is Taxed

Paid caregiving comes with tax rules that surprise a lot of families. The pivotal question is whether the care recipient lives in your home.

Under IRS Notice 2014-7, Medicaid waiver payments you receive for caring for someone who lives in your home are excluded from federal income tax. The IRS treats these as “difficulty of care” payments, and the exclusion applies whether or not you’re related. This covers PPP and other MLTSS waiver payments.¹³ If you moved into your mother’s home to care for her and it’s now where you live day to day, the IRS treats it as your home for this purpose. If the care recipient lives elsewhere and you visit to provide care, the payments are taxable.¹⁴

Outside the Notice 2014-7 exclusion, or under non-Medicaid arrangements like JACC, the care recipient becomes a household employer. In 2026, paying a household employee $3,000 or more in cash wages during the year triggers Social Security and Medicare tax withholding, reported on Schedule H with the recipient’s personal return. Cash wages of $1,000 or more in any calendar quarter also trigger federal unemployment tax on the first $7,000 of wages paid.¹⁵ PPP participants don’t have to work through this themselves because the fiscal intermediary handles it, but private-pay arrangements typically need a payroll service or accountant.

One more caution: if you receive Supplemental Security Income, caregiver pay generally counts as income. There is a narrow SSI deeming exclusion for in-home supportive services payments made under a government program to an eligible individual that are then paid to an ineligible spouse, parent, or child living in the same household.¹⁶ Talk to a benefits counselor before accepting caregiver pay if you rely on SSI or other means-tested benefits.

Wage, Overtime, and Sick Leave Rules

Hiring a family member as a caregiver creates an employment relationship, and New Jersey enforces the usual worker protections.

Minimum wage in 2026 is $15.92 per hour for most employees. Direct care staff in long-term care facilities have a higher floor of $18.92.¹⁷ Federal law has a narrow “companionship services” overtime exemption, but it only applies when care tasks take up less than 20% of the worker’s weekly hours. Most family caregivers spend the bulk of their time on personal care, so the exemption typically doesn’t apply and they’re entitled to time-and-a-half over 40 hours a week.¹⁸

New Jersey also requires every employer, household employers included, to carry workers’ compensation insurance.¹⁹ The state’s Earned Sick Leave Act covers domestic employees too, giving the caregiver one hour of sick leave for every 30 hours worked, up to 40 hours per year.²⁰

Under PPP, the fiscal intermediary manages most of these obligations. Under a private-pay setup or a program without built-in payroll support, workers’ compensation coverage and sick leave tracking fall on the care recipient as the employer. Skipping them creates real legal exposure.

1
Department of Human Services. Medicaid Managed Long Term Services and Supports (MLTSS)
2
Department of Human Services. Personal Preference Program (PPP)
3
NJ Division of Medical Assistance and Health Services. PPP Presentation 2026
4
NJ.gov Human Services. Personal Preference Program (PPP) Frequently Asked Questions
5
NJ Department of Human Services. Jersey Assistance for Community Caregiving (JACC)
6
Veterans Affairs. PCAFC Monthly Stipend Fact Sheet
7
Department of Veterans Affairs. Program of Comprehensive Assistance for Family Caregivers (PCAFC)
8
DAV. Veteran-Directed Home and Community Based Services
9
NJ Department of Labor & Workforce Development. New Benefit Rates for 2026
10
NJ Division of Temporary Disability and Family Leave Insurance. Family Leave Insurance FAQ
11
Medicaid.gov. January 2026 SSI and Spousal Impoverishment Standards
12
Justia. New Jersey Revised Statutes Title 26 Section 26:2H-83 – Background Checks for Nurse Aide, Personal Care Assistant Certification
13
Internal Revenue Service. Notice 2014-7
14
Internal Revenue Service. Certain Medicaid Waiver Payments May Be Excludable From Income
15
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 926 (2026), Household Employer’s Tax Guide
16
Social Security Administration. Deeming – In-Home Supportive Services Payments
17
NJ Department of Labor & Workforce Development. New Jersey’s Minimum Wage Increase
18
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 79A – Companionship Services Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)
19
NJ Department of Labor & Workforce Development. Rights for Domestic Workers
20
NJ Department of Labor & Workforce Development. Earned Sick Leave