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Guides and checklists

117 pages on organising care for a parent — what to write down, where to keep it, and what to ask. All free to read and print.

A room-by-room walkthrough you can do in one afternoon

The house does not feel right any more, and you cannot say why in a sentence.

What to write down and file after your parent falls

This page starts after the medical part is handled.

The once-a-year insurance and benefits review: what to gather, and who to ask

Insurance drifts.

One Calendar, One Owner: Running a Parent's Appointments

Three specialists, a dentist, a blood draw that has to happen before one of them, and a brother who books things directly with the office and forgets to say.

What to keep in the car for appointment days

Appointment days go wrong in small, repetitive ways.

Moving day into assisted living: the two weeks before, the day itself, and the first night

A move into assisted living is three jobs pretending to be one: a paperwork job, a measuring job and a logistics job.

How to inventory the equipment and supplies in your parent's home

Three different people are going to ask what is already in the house: the person coming to assess it, the supplier arranging the next delivery, and the sibling who is about to buy a second one.

What to write down on a care facility visit

Every place looks fine for the first ten minutes, and by the third visit they have blurred into one another.

How to Build One Contact Sheet for Your Parent's Whole Care Team

Phone contacts are private, unlabelled, and useless to anybody but you.

Questions to ask when you interview a caregiver for your parent

Hiring help is a hiring job, not a care decision.

Closing up the house after your parent moves: mail, utilities, keys and the last walk-through

Once your parent has moved, the house becomes an administrative object: an address that still receives mail, accounts that still bill, and a building that needs heating and watching.

How to Compare Care Facilities on Paper

You will visit four places over three weeks and, unless you write things down in the same shape every time, you will remember the one with the nice smell and the one where the manager was friendly.

The Alzheimer's paperwork: what to file and who needs a copy

This is a records page, not a medical page — ask the clinic about the condition itself.

Cancer treatment admin: the calendar, the team and the paperwork

This is a records page, not a medical page — ask the oncology team about the treatment, the condition and anything clinical.

COPD at home: the equipment records and the contacts page

This is a records page, not a medical page — ask your parent's doctor, the respiratory team and the pharmacist about the condition and the treatment.

Keeping records when your parent has dementia

This is a records page, not a medical page — ask your parent's doctor or the memory clinic about the condition itself.

Diabetes admin: supplies, refills and the appointment calendar

This is a records page, not a medical page — ask your parent's doctor, nurse or pharmacist about the condition, the medicines and any numbers.

Dialysis admin: the schedule, the transport and the rota

This is a records page, not a medical page — ask the kidney unit and your parent's doctor about the treatment itself.

Hearing loss: getting every answer in writing

This is a records page, not a medical page — ask the audiologist and your parent's doctor about hearing itself.

Heart failure admin: the daily record, the numbers and the changes log

This is a records page, not a medical page — ask the cardiology team, your parent's doctor and the pharmacist about the condition, the medicines and any daily instructions.

After a hip fracture: the records, the equipment and the house

This is a records page, not a medical page — ask the surgical team, the physical therapist and your parent's doctor about the recovery itself.

When your parent can no longer read the post

This is a records page, not a medical page — ask the eye clinic and your parent's doctor about vision itself.

Arthritis and mobility: what to write down about the house and the week

This is a records page, not a medical page — ask your parent's doctor, pharmacist or therapist about the condition, the pain and the treatment.

When your parent has several conditions and six different doctors

This is a records page, not a medical page — ask your parent's doctors about the conditions, and the pharmacist about the medicines.

Parkinson's: the medication schedule and the records around it

This is a records page, not a medical page — ask your parent's neurologist or pharmacist about the medicines and the condition itself.

After an operation: the paperwork, the dates and the first week home

This is a records page, not a medical page — ask the surgical team, the discharge nurse and your parent's doctor about the recovery itself and about any instruction sheet you are given.

Stroke recovery: the records to keep from hospital to home

This is a records page, not a medical page — ask the hospital team and your parent's doctor about the condition and the recovery itself.

How to Keep a Daily Observation Log You Can Hand to a Professional

When a clinician asks what you have noticed, "he seems more confused lately" gives them almost nothing to work with.

Building a digital accounts and passwords inventory for your parent

Almost everything about a parent's life now has a login attached to it, and almost none of it is written down anywhere.

Where to keep your parent's documents so someone else can find them

At some point you become the person who knows where everything is, and that is a single point of failure.

Scanning 40 years of paper: mail-in, local shop, or do it yourself

There is a filing cabinet, a loft box and a drawer of envelopes, and somewhere inside is the document you need this week.

The Document Checklist for an Aging Parent

Most of the delay in arranging anything for an aging parent is not medical.

How to Sort and Downsize a Lifetime of Belongings

Four hours in the spare room and you have filled one carrier bag, because the third box contained school reports and everything stopped.

How to Keep a Record of What Was Sold, Kept or Given Away

Eighteen months after the house was cleared, someone will ask what happened to the dining table.

The downsizing sort checklist: five piles, one room at a time

Sorting a house is not one big decision.

What goes on your parent's emergency contact sheet

In the first ten minutes of an emergency, somebody who has never met your parent needs facts, and you may not be in the room.

The last ten minutes of your visit: a handover checklist

You did four hours of useful work and then left, and by Thursday nobody can remember whether the pharmacy was called or whether that was the week before.

Fall detection, explained without the sales page

Fall detection is the most heavily marketed add-on in the medical alert category and the least clearly explained.

Choosing a location device for a parent who leaves the house alone

If your parent has started going out and not finding the way back, that is a change to report to their doctor, and it is the first call to make.

Agency or private hire: what changes when you employ someone directly

The hourly rate is the first number anyone compares and the least useful one.

How to Make a Home Inventory Before a Move

A home inventory sounds like an accountant's job until the van arrives and nobody can say whether the carriage clock went on it.

The home safety equipment list, room by room

Search this category and you get a hundred products in a grid with no sense of which ones need a professional and which ones need a screwdriver.

How to Do a Room-by-Room Home Safety Walkthrough

You have noticed the rug in the hall, and the bulb at the top of the stairs that has been out since June.

The first 48 hours after your parent is admitted: an admin checklist

A hospital admission happens in a corridor, at speed, usually with someone talking to you while you are still holding your car keys.

What to pack in a hospital bag for your parent

Most hospital bags get packed badly because they get packed fast.

Discharge day: the checklist to run before you leave the ward

Discharge day moves faster than anyone expects.

How to Brief a New Caregiver or Helper on Day One

A new helper arrives, you have forty minutes before you have to leave, and everything you know is in your head in no particular order.

How to Split the Caregiving Work Between Siblings, in Writing

The argument is almost never about who cares more.

How to Hand Over Care Before You Travel: The Handover Pack

You can leave for a week.

How to Build a Respite Schedule That Actually Gets Booked

Most respite fails at the booking stage, not the resting stage.

How to Keep a Shared Cost Ledger Between Siblings

Money between siblings goes wrong quietly.

How to Make a Caregiver Binder for Your Parent

The first time someone asks for your father's insurance ID number while you are standing in a hallway, you find out how scattered his paperwork is.

The Discharge Paperwork Pile: Sort It in One Sitting

There is a pile on the kitchen counter.

Organizing Insurance and Benefits Paperwork Without Losing a Letter

Insurance paperwork is not difficult, it is voluminous, and it punishes the one envelope nobody opened.

Organizing Your Parent's Medical Records So You Can Find Anything

Medical records arrive as a pile: portal printouts, a discharge summary, lab pages with no date visible on the front, a letter from a specialist you have never met.

Getting a Parent to Appointments: The Ride Plan

The appointment is at 10:40 and it takes twenty-five minutes to drive there, so you leave at ten.

How to Organize Your Own Paperwork When You Hold Everything

When you are the one holding everything, the paperwork does not arrive in a manageable stream.

Getting Ready for a Care Needs Assessment

Somebody is coming to the house with a form.

Hospital Discharge: The Week Before and the Day Itself

Discharge feels like it happens suddenly.

How to Run a Family Care Meeting That Ends With Decisions

A family meeting that opens with feelings closes with feelings.

How to Set Practical Boundaries When You Are the Default Sibling

Being the default happens by accumulation, not by decision.

How to Track What You Actually Spend on Your Parent

Ask most people what caregiving costs them and they will name the big obvious things and miss half the total.

How to Write a Care Summary Someone Else Can Pick Up Cold

At some point somebody who is not you will need to act on your parent's behalf at short notice — a sibling flying in, a cover person, an admissions clerk with a form.

The backup plan: what someone needs to know if you are suddenly unavailable

You are the single point of failure.

Which documents to gather for your parent, and where to keep them

Nobody hands you this list.

In-home or mobile: which medical alert fits your parent's week?

The choice between an in-home base station and a mobile unit is not a choice between cheap and expensive.

How to Organise Keys, Codes and Access

There are eleven keys in the kitchen drawer and nobody knows what four of them open.

Caring for a parent from three states away: the setup that works

Distance turns every small question into a phone call, and every phone call into an unreliable answer.

How to compare medical alert systems without guessing

Every medical alert company sells the same promise in the same photograph, and the differences that matter are not on the sales page.

What belongs on your parent's medication list

Every professional who meets your parent will ask for the list, and the version in your head will not survive the third question.

How to Keep a Paper Medication Log for Your Parent

Medication paperwork goes wrong in a predictable way.

One hour a month that stops the paperwork piling up

The paperwork of caring for a parent is not hard.

Your parent has a diagnosis. Here is the first week of paperwork.

The medical part is now in other people's hands.

How to Build a One-Page Emergency Sheet for Your Parent

If your parent is taken to hospital while you are two hours away, someone will be asking a stranger for information nobody in the room has.

How to Organise a Parent's Move to Assisted Living

The decision was the hard part.

How to Organise a Parent's Financial Paperwork

There is a bureau, a biscuit tin, a drawer under the phone and a carrier bag in the loft, and between them they contain everything about your parent's money.

The account list nobody has made yet — and where to keep it

Somewhere there is a notebook, a phone note, and a sticky label under a keyboard, and between them they are the only record of how to reach your parent's accounts.

From a weekly box to a locked dispenser: what each one actually solves

There are four separate products sold under "medication organiser" and they cost between five dollars and several hundred.

What to gather before the power of attorney appointment

You have an appointment booked and a vague list of things to bring.

How to Prepare a House for a Returning Parent

You have been told they can come home, possibly tomorrow, possibly today.

The 45-minute quarterly review that keeps the binder true

A binder built in March and never touched is a liability by September, because people believe it.

What to ask a financial advisor about your parent's accounts

This page contains no financial advice and cannot contain any.

What to Ask a Home Care Agency Before You Sign

Agencies sound similar on the phone.

Questions to Ask a Nursing Home or Assisted Living Community

The tour is designed to be pleasant.

What to Ask the Pharmacist and Doctor About a New Prescription

A new prescription arrives with about forty seconds of explanation and a leaflet folded eight times.

What to ask before equipment and supplies arrive at the house

Equipment usually turns up on the worst possible day — the discharge day, when three other things are happening and nobody writes anything down.

What to Ask an Elder Law Attorney About Your Parent's Paperwork

Somewhere in your parent's house there is a folder, a drawer or a shoebox with the important documents in it, and nobody is entirely sure what is in there or whether any of it is current.

What to ask a facility about money, before you sign anything

Every facility will tell you a monthly figure on the tour.

What to Ask — and What to Bring — to a Care Needs Assessment

Someone comes to the house for an hour, asks your parent how they are managing, and your parent says fine.

The follow-up appointment: fifteen minutes, three questions, one page

A follow-up appointment is short, and it will not expand to fit everything you have been storing up since the last one.

What to Ask a Private Caregiver Before You Hire

Hiring privately usually costs less per hour than an agency and gives your parent one consistent person instead of six.

What to Ask Before Your Parent Leaves the Hospital

Discharge is usually announced with a few hours' notice, on a busy ward, by someone you have not met.

Forty questions to settle before the van arrives

Moving a parent into your house is usually decided in a week and lived with for years.

Questions to Ask the Doctor at Your Parent's First Appointment

The first appointment with a new doctor is short, and it is the one appointment where nobody in the room has the whole picture.

The memory care tour: what to ask, what to look at, what to write down

A tour is a sales visit at a time of day chosen by the seller.

The home visit: what to have ready, what to ask, what to do with the answers

An occupational therapist will spend an hour in your parent's house and see things you have stopped seeing after twenty years of visiting it.

The Family Care Meeting: What to Ask Your Siblings

Most families never hold this meeting.

What to Ask the Discharge Nurse Before Your Parent Goes Home

The discharge nurse is the person who knows what your parent's day has actually looked like on the ward, and what the house is going to have to absorb.

How to run an insurance call so that you never have to make it twice

The insurance call is not hard, it is just designed to be repeated.

The questions to ask on a care home tour, and what to write down

A tour is designed to be reassuring.

Sixty questions to ask your parent, and how to record the answers

There is a window in which your parent can still tell you things that nobody else knows: which bank the pension goes into, what their mother's maiden name was, who they want called first.