Hiring Filipino Caregivers: What Agencies Should Verify

Filipino caregivers are one of the most consistently requested worker categories we see from overseas employers, but the category hides two very different placement types with different rules attached. Before an agency builds a caregiver pipeline, it’s worth knowing which rules apply to which placement — and what a candidate’s paperwork should actually show. This article walks through the verification points that matter most.

Two Different “Caregiver” Placements — and Why the Difference Matters

Not every job advertised as “caregiver” falls under the same regulatory category with the Philippine Department of Migrant Workers (DMW).

Household Service Worker (HSW) placements. Historically, most Filipino caregiver deployment has happened under the HSW / domestic worker framework — a worker employed directly inside a private household, typically in the Gulf states and other markets with long-standing bilateral domestic worker arrangements. This is the category most DMW advisories on caregivers actually govern, and it carries its own age floor and wage floor (both covered below).

Institutional and healthcare-adjacent caregiver placements. Separately, a growing number of destination countries are opening dedicated channels for Filipino caregivers to work in nursing homes, hospitals, or assisted-living settings rather than private households — South Korea’s pilot caregiver program and Canada’s caregiver pathway to permanent residence are both examples reported in the last two years (Migrant Forum in Asia; immigrationstartguide.com). These placements are not household-based, so the HSW-specific age and wage rules don’t automatically apply the same way.

The practical takeaway for agencies: before quoting an age floor, a wage floor, or a document checklist to a partner, confirm which of these two placement types is actually on the table. Applying HSW rules to a non-household placement (or vice versa) is a common source of avoidable compliance errors.

TESDA Caregiving NC II — What the Certificate Actually Verifies

Most Filipino caregiver candidates will present a TESDA Caregiving NC II certificate. It’s worth knowing what that credential actually certifies before treating it as a screening shortcut.

The TESDA Training Regulation for Caregiving NC II lists 15 units of competency across three tiers: four basic competencies (workplace communication, working in a team environment, career professionalism, and occupational health and safety), four common competencies (infection control, responding to challenging behavior, basic first aid, and following care-service standards), and seven core competencies covering care for infants and toddlers, children, the elderly, and people with special needs, plus household environment maintenance, basic emergency response, and routine domestic tasks (TESDA Training Regulation, Caregiving NC II).

Two things worth flagging for a sourcing team:

1. TESDA also publishes separate, more specialized Training Regulations — Caregiving (Elderly) NC II, Caregiving (Clients with Special Needs) NC II, and Caregiving (Newborn to Preschooler) NC II among them (TESDA Downloadables). Which version a candidate holds can matter if an overseas employer has a specific population in mind (elderly care vs. pediatric care, for instance) — it’s worth asking which certificate is on the candidate’s actual document, not assuming “Caregiving NC II” always means the general, all-population version.
2. TESDA’s Registry of Certified Workers lets an agency independently confirm a certificate number, holder name, and qualification against TESDA’s own records rather than relying on a photocopy (tesda.gov.ph/Rwac) — the same registry we’ve referenced for construction and skilled-trade credentials in earlier posts on this blog.

Age and Documentation: What Changed for Household-Based Placements

For caregiver candidates going into household-based (HSW-type) roles specifically, two regulatory points are worth checking against the candidate’s actual age and contract, since both have moved in the last few years:

• Minimum deployment age. Reporting from 2022 describes the minimum age for Filipino household service workers being raised to 24, from a previous floor of 23, under an advisory tied to the Expanded Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act (Gulf News). Agencies should treat this as a floor to verify directly against the candidate’s passport-registered birth date, not against a stated age on a resume.
• Minimum monthly wage. DMW Advisory No. 25-2025 raised the minimum monthly wage built into HSW employment contracts from USD 400 — a figure that had stood since 2006 — to USD 500, effective August 23, 2025, and applicable to all employment contracts the DMW processes for this category (Sun.Star Manila).

Neither of these figures should be quoted to a partner employer as a general “caregiver” rule — they specifically describe the household service worker contract floor, and (per the first section above) may not carry over unchanged to an institutional or healthcare-setting placement.

Experience Verification Beyond the Certificate

A TESDA certificate confirms that a candidate has completed a structured competency assessment — it does not, by itself, confirm hands-on experience with a specific care population (say, post-stroke elderly care versus general companionship care). For roles where an employer has asked for a specific type of care experience, it’s worth asking a candidate for prior employer references or a documented work history separate from the TESDA credential, rather than treating “Caregiving NC II” as a stand-in for experience with every population the certificate’s competency units cover on paper.

This matters more for caregiver placements than for some other worker categories, because the cost of a mismatch is unusually high: an employer hiring care for an elderly parent or a child with special needs is not in a position to simply swap the worker out mid-placement the way a construction site might reassign a worker to a different task.

Background and Medical Documentation

Caregiver candidates go through the same background and medical screening expected of OFWs generally — but it’s worth confirming these are complete and current before a candidate is presented to an employer, rather than assumed:

• An NBI (National Bureau of Investigation) police clearance, confirming no pending criminal record in the Philippines.
• A medical examination from a DOH-accredited clinic, which for caregiver and household-based roles typically also screens for conditions that would affect fitness for physically demanding care work.
• Any country-specific medical or background clearance the destination country requires on top of the standard Philippine-side checks — these vary by destination and should be confirmed with the receiving employer or the receiving country’s own embassy guidance rather than assumed to be uniform across markets.

Standard OFW Documentation Still Applies

Whatever the placement type, the usual overseas deployment paperwork still applies on top of the caregiving-specific points above: an Overseas Employment Certificate (OEC), valid for 60 days from issuance and required before departure for newly hired workers, and attendance at the standard pre-departure orientation seminar. We’ve covered the general DMW registration and contract-verification steps for new hires in more detail in our guide on how to recruit from the Philippines — the caregiver-specific points above sit on top of that baseline process, not instead of it.

A Verification Checklist for Agencies

Before presenting a Filipino caregiver candidate to an overseas employer, an agency should be able to confirm:

1. Which placement category applies — household-based (HSW) or institutional/healthcare-setting — since the rules below differ by category.
2. The specific TESDA caregiving certificate the candidate holds (general Caregiving NC II, or one of the specialized tracks), verified against TESDA’s Registry of Certified Workers rather than a photocopy alone.
3. For household-based placements, the candidate’s age against the current minimum deployment age floor, checked against passport records.
4. For household-based placements, that the employment contract reflects the current DMW minimum monthly wage floor.
5. Documented prior care experience with the specific population the employer needs, separate from what the certificate alone shows.
6. Current NBI police clearance and DOH-accredited medical clearance, plus any destination-country-specific clearance.
7. That standard OEC and pre-departure orientation requirements are on track regardless of placement type.

Where This Fits in a Broader Sourcing Partnership

Caregiver sourcing is one worker category among several that an overseas agency typically wants a Philippine-based partner to handle end-to-end — from credential verification through to contract compliance. If you’re evaluating a Philippine sourcing partner for caregiver placements or any other worker category, our for-partners page walks through how that partnership typically works. You can also see the broader range of worker categories we support on our industries page.