The assessment visit is the point where a provider stops talking about your family and starts looking at your house. Done well, it gives the provider what it needs to write a plan you can check. Done badly, it is a sales walk-through with a clipboard. This guide covers the visit from the moment it is booked to the moment you hold the notes, so you know what to check at each stop.
Local option: New Plan Care gives families in the St. Louis area in-home help so a parent can stay home: companionship, help with bathing and dressing, meals, and overnight care. Call (314) 405-0887.
Before the visit is booked
1. Write the daily picture on one page. List the hours the help is needed, the tasks that worry you most, and the rooms and stairs the person moves through in a normal day.
Hours needed: ______ to ______ on these days: ______
Tasks that worry us most: ______
2. Ask who will attend the visit. Listen for a name and a role. Ask whether the person who visits is the same person who will be assigned to shifts. If not, ask who makes the assignment and when you will hear the name.
Name of the visitor: ______ Role: ______
3. Ask how long the visit takes and whether it is charged. Write the answer. If a charge applies, have it named on paper before the visit happens.
Length of visit: ______ Charged? Yes / No, amount: ______
During the walk-through
4. Walk the house with the provider, not behind it. Show the path from the car to the door, the entry, the bathroom, the stairs, the kitchen, and where the phone sits. Point out where the things the person uses every day are kept, including the place the family keeps medicine. A caregiver may give reminders and pick up prescriptions as an errand, but the family, the doctor, and the pharmacist keep the medicine itself. Say that out loud so the notes reflect it.
5. Ask what the provider looks for in the house and what it will write down. Listen for specifics such as loose rugs or cords on the floor, lighting on the route to the bathroom, bed height, and whether doors lock from the inside. A vague answer such as we will see what is needed is not an answer. Ask: will you write down what you saw, and will I get a copy?
6. Ask what the person in the house does and does not do, and get it in plain words. A non-medical caregiver does not handle medicine. Ask the provider to list what a shift covers, such as meals, laundry, errands, company, and reminders. Write the list.
Tasks the provider says are included: ______
Tasks the provider says are not included: ______
Signs to walk away
Stop the process if the visit ends with a request to sign before you have the notes. Stop if the provider will not say who will come to the house, if no one looks at the house, if the walk-through is skipped in favor of a sales talk, or if the answer to will I get a copy is no.
After the visit
7. Compare the notes with what you said. Read them within a day, while you still remember the house. Mark anything wrong, such as a wrong room, a missed task, or an hour count that does not match what you agreed to.
Errors found: ______
8. Ask for corrections in writing. Keep the revised notes with your one-page daily picture. Together they become the base for the written plan, which is the next step.
Where to go next
If you are still choosing a provider, Start Here: Five Steps to Hiring lays out the order of the whole process. The Local Help for Hiring a Caregiver page lists where to get help in the St. Louis area.