How we rate
How does this desk rank home care agencies? Five criteria and public data.
The front page of Senior Care Map STL ranks the nine best senior home care agencies serving St. Charles County and west St. Louis County. This page explains the criteria, the data behind every rating and review count, who supports the site, and the county files the rest of the desk is built on.
The method in one box
- Ranking
- Editorial, on five weighted criteria. No agency carries a numeric score from this desk; each carries its real Google figures and a qualitative label.
- Agency data
- Google Maps listings for 162 St. Louis area home care agencies: name, city, address, rating and review count. Pulled September 12, 2026, and printed exactly as pulled.
- County data
- U.S. Census Bureau Vintage 2024 county characteristics and BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, 2024 Q4, NAICS 621610. Pulled September 10, 2026.
- Support
- New Plan Care, a St. Louis in-home care company, outside the ranking. More below.
- Corrections
- Made in place. The revision date above moves when they are.
The five criteria and their weights
Every agency is considered against the same five questions a family in the western suburbs should ask before anyone comes to the house. Each criterion carries a fixed weight.
| Criterion | Weight | What we look for |
|---|---|---|
| Local ownership and accountability | 25% | Who owns the company, where the decisions are made, and whether a named, reachable person is answerable when something goes wrong. Owner-operated local companies score highest; franchise offices are judged on the local operation. |
| The first conversation | 20% | How easy it is to ask a question without being pushed: whether a real person answers, whether contact details are optional, and whether the family chooses how it is contacted. |
| Plan flexibility | 20% | Whether support can start small, whether plans are built with the family, and whether they change when life changes without a new contract. |
| Non-medical clarity | 20% | Whether the company says plainly what it does and does not do. Non-medical support at home, personal care, companionship, respite and household help, should never be blurred with clinical care. |
| Family communication | 15% | How the company keeps a family informed: published resources, clear contact routes, and a stated habit of reaching families the way they asked. |
Why no agency carries a score
This desk has each agency's public listing and its own website, which is enough to describe it fairly and not enough to put a number on its first conversation or its family communication. So every ranked agency carries its real Google rating and review count, printed exactly as pulled, and one qualitative label, such as "Referral model across three counties" or "Longest stated history, since 1992", that can be defended from the listing and the agency's own site. Their order reflects the criteria that public information does speak to, local ownership, stated service area across the two counties and non-medical clarity, with Google review depth as the tiebreaker. This desk publishes no invented quotes, prices, response times or client stories about any agency.
The agency data and the item set
The agency file is a Google Maps pull of 162 St. Louis area home care listings taken on September 12, 2026, with each listing's name, city, address, phone, website, rating, review count and Google category. Every rating and review count on this site comes from that file, and the pull date is printed beside them.
For the front page ranking the file is filtered to addresses in St. Charles, O'Fallon, St. Peters, Wentzville, Dardenne Prairie, Chesterfield, Ballwin, Ellisville, Kirkwood, Des Peres and Eureka, then to listings with 20 or more reviews, one listing per brand. Two listings are excluded by kind rather than by number: FreedomCare, a Medicaid consumer-directed program rather than an agency, and a skilled nursing and therapy provider, because the ranking is about non-medical support at home. A ranking needs at least six real rows; this one has nine.
The geography lists are different. They are pure sorts on Google review count for a stated set of cities, with ties broken by rating and then by name, and they include every listing in the cut whatever its kind. A table needs at least ten rows. The St. Charles County list shows 16 of 30 reviewed listings, the Chesterfield, Ballwin and Wildwood list all 17, and the Florissant and Ferguson list all 15. A planned Hazelwood cut had no rows and was folded into the Florissant and Ferguson title honestly rather than printed empty.
Who supports this site
This site is supported by New Plan Care, a St. Louis in-home care company. It is not in the ranking or in any data table. The contact form on the front page sends a request to New Plan Care Solutions and to nobody else.
No agency can pay to appear in the ranking or to move in it. Support does not change a single rating, review count or county figure on the site, and this desk does not accept payment to publish negative claims about anyone. The county data is not for sale.
The county files
Population. The Census Bureau's Vintage 2024 county characteristics files cc-est2024-agesex-29.csv for Missouri and cc-est2024-agesex-17.csv for Illinois, columns POPESTIMATE, AGE65PLUS_TOT and AGE85PLUS_TOT, county summary rows only (SUMLEV 050). Only rows coded YEAR 6 are read, so every population figure describes July 1, 2024. These are estimates built from the 2020 census base, not a fresh count, and the Bureau's methodology is the authority on them.
Businesses. The BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, 2024 Q4 county files, private ownership, NAICS 621610, columns qtrly_estabs and month3_emplvl. NAICS 621610 mixes medical and non-medical home care in one code, so no county page claims to count non-medical providers specifically. Employment withheld under disclosure code N is shown as withheld, and a county with no row is shown as no row published. Neither is shown as zero.
Geography. Regional pages cover the 15 counties of the St. Louis MO-IL metropolitan statistical area, with the independent city of St. Louis as its own row, never merged into St. Louis County. Statewide pages cover all 115 Missouri county equivalents. Four figures are computed by this desk rather than published by an agency: share aged 65 and over, 85 and over as a share of 65 and over, establishments per 1,000 residents aged 65 and over, and employment per 1,000. Each formula is stated on the page that uses it.
Limits and corrections
Nothing here is medical. Population counts describe who lives where by age. They do not identify need, diagnosis or clinical status, and no page converts a count into a care requirement. The agencies on the front page are considered for non-medical support at home, and nothing on this site is medical, diagnostic or treatment information.
A review count is a count. It measures how many people left a Google review, not quality. A 5.0 on five reviews and a 4.7 on 46 are different amounts of evidence, which is why this desk always prints the two together.
No licence claims. This desk does not certify, license or accredit anyone and makes no claim that any agency holds a licence it has not published. Ask each agency directly.
Municipality figures. County totals only. Town-level age data comes from a survey interface that can return an error page with a success code, and this desk will not publish numbers on that footing.
Corrections. If a rating, count or county figure here disagrees with its source, the source is right and this desk wants to know. Corrections are made in place and the revision date at the top of this page moves when they are.