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. Written in advance, the same briefing takes twenty minutes and does not have to be repeated to the next person. Three sheets do almost all of it.
What you can brief, and what you must not
Get this line clear before you write anything, because it decides what belongs on your sheets.
You brief the household, the routine, the preferences, the paperwork and the contacts. That is genuinely valuable knowledge and nobody else has it. Which mug. Which door sticks. That the afternoon call from the neighbour is expected and welcome. Which trash day. Where the folder lives.
You do not brief anything hands-on or clinical. Moving and transferring, bathing, feeding techniques, medications, equipment operation, wound or skin care — all of that is trained and supervised by the agency or by the clinician who ordered it, and it is not yours to demonstrate even if you have been doing it for two years. If a helper asks you to show them, the right answer is "their supervisor covers that — let me get you the number."
So on day one, ask the agency two questions and get the answers in writing: who trains what, and who supervises this worker. Put both names and numbers on the contact card. It protects the helper as much as it protects your parent.
The one-page routine sheet
Three columns, one page: Time | What usually happens | Preference or note. Written in the order the day actually runs, from waking to bed.
Write what is true rather than what is ideal. "Usually up around 7:30, sometimes 9 — does not like being woken" is more useful than a schedule nobody keeps. Preferences are the whole value of this sheet, because they are what makes a stranger feel less like a stranger: tea before anything else, the radio on rather than the television, the blue mug, the chair by the window, curtains open first thing, no phone calls before nine.
Where something clinical touches the day, point at it rather than describing it. A row can say "10:00 — the medication box is on the kitchen shelf; the pharmacy fills it and the schedule card is inside the lid." It should not say what is in it or when to take what. That information belongs to the pharmacy and the doctor's office, on their paperwork, and anything a clinician has asked a helper to record goes on the form the clinician provided rather than on your sheet.
Date the page in the footer and reprint it when the routine changes.
The house sheet
The second page is purely operational, and it is the one helpers actually reach for in the first fortnight. Nobody wants to phone you to ask where the light bulbs are.
Cover the building and the week. Keys and how the front door behaves. Alarm and what to do if it goes off. Thermostat, and the honest note about the room that never gets warm. Water shutoff. Fuse box. Trash and recycling days and where the cans go. Laundry: machine, where things are dried, what must not go in the dryer. Wifi network name. Where spare bulbs, batteries and cleaning supplies are kept. Mail: where it goes and who opens it. Parking and any permit. Which neighbours have a key and their names.
One thing does not go on this sheet: the door code or lockbox combination. Give that verbally, or through the agency, and change it when a helper leaves. Write on the sheet "entry code held by [name], call for it" instead.
Print it, put it in the folder, and tape a copy inside a kitchen cupboard door where it will be found without being on display.
The contact card and the escalation ladder
Third page, and the one that matters most on a bad evening. Do not make a new helper work out who to call.
Write four lines in this order, and write them as instructions rather than options. Call 911 first in an emergency, then call the numbers below. Call the doctor's office for anything about care or symptoms — with the name, number and hours. Call the agency's out-of-hours line for anything about staffing, cover or the shift itself. Call the family contact for everything else, with a name, a mobile and the best hours.
Underneath, list the secondary contacts: second family member, neighbour, the agency supervisor by name, the pharmacy, and the regular plumber and yard person, because a burst pipe on a Sunday is a real event.
The important instruction is the one people leave out: tell them explicitly that they should never wait to be sure before calling 911, and that nobody in your family will ever be annoyed about a call that turned out to be nothing. Say it out loud on day one and write it on the card.
What to ask them to write down each shift
Ask for a short factual log every shift, and make it short enough that it actually gets filled in. Eight columns on a landscape page, one row per shift, a pen clipped to the folder.
The purpose of the log is administrative: it gives the family and, when they ask, the doctor's office a factual record instead of a set of recollections. Frame it that way when you introduce it, or it can feel like surveillance. It is a record, not a report card.
Explain that anything a clinician has specifically asked to be recorded goes on the clinician's own form, not on this one. Two records with different rules is confusing; one clear boundary is not.
- Date and time in / time out
- Meals and drinks offered, and what was taken
- Activity or outing — where, how long
- Visitors or calls received
- Anything the family should know, in plain factual terms
- Supplies running low
- Anything the helper wants the next shift to know
- Signature or initials
The first week, and the paperwork you keep
Day one, shadow the first shift for an hour if you can. Day three, make a five-minute call with four questions: what could you not find, what did I not tell you, what is different from what you expected, what do you need. Day seven, a fifteen-minute review at the house, and update the three sheets that evening rather than promising to.
Meanwhile, open a one-page file on the helper and keep it behind the care team tab: agency name, supervisor name and direct number, worker's name, start date, agreed schedule, hourly rate, invoice contact and payment terms, and a note of what the agency confirmed about background checks and insurance. Ask for that confirmation by email so you have it.
If you are hiring someone privately rather than through an agency, the employment side — tax, insurance, worker classification, payroll — is handled by a payroll service or an employment attorney, and it is worth one conversation before the first payment rather than a discovery afterwards. That is not a corner to work out from a search engine.
Reprint the routine sheet each time it changes, and hand the same pack to the next helper.
Write the routine sheet first, tonight, in the order the day actually happens, and stop at one page. Add the preferences — the mug, the radio, the chair — because that is the part nobody else can supply. The house sheet and the contact card can be done tomorrow. Then call the agency and ask, in writing, who trains what and who supervises this worker.
Questions
How much should I tell a new helper about my parent's health?
Hand over paperwork rather than explanations. Give them access to the printed material the doctor's office and pharmacy have supplied, dated, in the folder, and tell them where it is. Anything about conditions, medications or care techniques comes to them through the agency, the supervising nurse or the clinician who ordered the care — that is how they are trained and it is how they are covered. Your contribution is the routine, the preferences, the house and the contacts, which is a great deal and is genuinely theirs to learn from you.
What if my parent does not want a stranger in the house?
Handle it as scheduling rather than persuasion. Introduce the helper during a normal visit while you are there, keep the first slot short, and use the same person every time rather than whoever is available. Put the introduction on the calendar as its own event so it is not attached to a task. Ask the agency directly for consistency of worker and put that request in writing when the arrangement starts, because it is much harder to introduce later.
Should I ask for the log to be written every shift, even a quiet one?
Yes, and say so explicitly, because helpers often leave a quiet shift blank out of politeness. A short line — quiet day, sat in the garden, ate lunch, no visitors — is genuinely useful when you read the week back, and a blank row tells you nothing at all. Keep the form to eight columns and one line per shift, and clip a pen to the folder. Logs fail because of missing pens far more often than missing willingness.
The free one-page emergency sheet
Everything an ambulance crew, a neighbour or a sibling would need in the first ten minutes — on one page for the fridge.
The list is not connected yet — this form is not live. The sheet is downloadable directly below in the meantime.