the caregiver's desk

Walk the house before you hire anyone

This site is written to you, the one doing the work, and not about the person who needs it. Most of what keeps a parent at home is not care at all. It is stairs, a bathroom, meals, rides, errands, and somebody noticing before a small household task turns into a fall.

Nobody hands you this job on a good day. It usually starts with a phone call, a hospital discharge, or a Saturday visit where the mail is stacked up and the milk has gone off. Then you are standing in a kitchen you grew up in, trying to work out whether your parent can keep living here and what it would take. That is the question this desk answers, in the order you actually have to answer it.

this weekend

Do these seven things first

None of them cost money and all of them can be done on one visit. Work down the list and check off what you finish. What you cannot finish tells you what to ask for help with.

Walk the stairs behind them. Watch whether a hand goes to the wall instead of a handrail, and whether both hands are free or something is being carried.
Stand in the bathroom and look for something to hold. A towel bar is not a grab bar. Note where a real one would have to go, near the toilet and at the tub.
Open the refrigerator. Read the dates. Meals are the first routine to quietly stop, and it shows up here before it shows up in conversation.
Ask how they got to their last appointment. Rides are the second routine to stop, and the answer is often a neighbour who has also stopped driving.
Count the throw rugs and pick them up. This is the single fastest change in the house, and the NIA guidance below says plainly not to use them.
Turn on every light and replace what is out. Stairs, hallways, the path from the bed to the bathroom.
Write down who to call. Doctor, pharmacy, one neighbour, and the Area Agency on Aging that covers the address. Large print, taped where the phone lives.

the survey

Count how many people are doing what you are doing

It is worth knowing the size of the thing you have joined. The CDC runs a caregiving module inside its Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, and states choose whether to field it in a given year. These three figures are the ones that matter most to a family in this metro, each with its own question number and its own year.

21.8%

of Missouri adults 65 and older gave care to a friend or family member in the past month. BRFSS Q36, 2021. Illinois: 16.4 percent.

33.6%

of Missouri's older caregivers averaged 20 or more hours of care a week. BRFSS Q39, 2021. Illinois: 39.9 percent.

48.6%

of Missouri adults 65 and older reported a disability including sensory or mobility limits. BRFSS Q46, 2022. Illinois: 40.4 percent.

Twenty hours a week is half a job. That is the number to hold onto when somebody tells you that what you are doing is just helping out. The state by state comparison shows how wide the spread is, and Illinois sits higher than Missouri on that measure even though fewer of its older adults are giving care at all. Two different questions, two different orders, which is exactly why they get two different pages.

the desk

Open the page you need

Fix the house one room at a timeThe checklist. No ranking, no products, every line cited to the National Institute on Aging or the CDC. Call the agency that covers your addressRides, meals and errands. The three Area Agencies on Aging that cover this region, as a reference box. See how many older adults are giving care where you live48 states and territories, BRFSS Q36, 2021. Find out how heavy a caregiving week gets48 states and territories, BRFSS Q39, 2021. Measure how common physical limits already are54 states and territories, BRFSS Q46, 2022. Check every number against its sourceQuestion numbers, years, the age cut, and why some years are simply missing.

room by room

Give yourself twelve stops

The full checklist is on its own page. Here is the route, so you can see how long it takes before you start. Twelve stops, one visit, a pen in your hand.

The front steps and the path to the door
The porch light and the lock
The entry floor, where the rug usually is
The stairs, both handrails, top and bottom switches
The hallway and its lighting
The bathroom, toilet and tub
The bathroom floor and the night light
The bedroom, the lamp, the phone by the bed
The kitchen, the shelves that need a stretch
The kitchen floor and the seat to work from
The living room furniture and the cords
The list of emergency numbers by the phone

Open the room by room checklist and take it with you.

ask for help at home

Tell us where you are and someone will call you back

This form goes to New Plan Care, the paid placement above. It is the only form on this site and it is not a match service, a referral network or a ranking of anybody. If you would rather not fill anything in, call (314) 405-0887 and start there.

We ask for a name, a phone number and a town. We do not ask what condition your parent has, what medications they take, or anything else about their health, and you should not type it here. Those questions belong with their doctor.

rides, meals, errands

Learn the three phone numbers

Before you pay for anything, find out what already exists. Every address in this region falls inside one Area Agency on Aging, and those agencies are the front door to meals, transportation, benefits help and caregiver support in that county. Which one you call depends only on where your parent lives, not on income, not on diagnosis, and not on whether you have hired anyone.

There are exactly three that cover the St. Louis metro. Three rows is nowhere near enough for a ranking, so we do not pretend it is one. They sit on their own reference page with their published service areas and their own phone numbers, in geographic order.

what this site is not

Read this part before you trust anything else here

Help at home is non-medical. It is company, meals, laundry, a ride, a reminder, a hand on the stairs, and the difference between a household running and a household stopping. It is not nursing, not therapy, not medicine, and nobody here can tell you what is wrong with your parent or what to do about it. Anything clinical belongs with their doctor.

Every health statement on this site names its source and links to it. Every survey figure names its question number and its year. The one commercial thing on this site is the labelled slot above, and it is labelled every single time it appears.