Companion Care is the Most Critical Stage of Your Aging Cycle Companion care is the most important and absolutely the most critical stage of care to maintaining your independence. Companion care is early-stage care that is non-medical and its definition of what it does can be found in its name, it provides companionship. In the United States, older adults are much more likely to live alone than in other countries. That percentage increases with age. The reason this stage of care is so important are because of two factors: it is the stage where you can make the biggest impact on an older adult's independence and the stage where you can make the biggest impact in saving the older adult money for care related expenses. How Companion Care Can Extend Independence An older adult living alone can have very infrequent interaction with others. Family can live far away and studies have shown that living alone can cause depression . This is dangerous for an ...