Many families start looking for a caregiver because one person has become the answer to everything. The phone rings, that person drives, that person pays, and that person remembers the medicine times. Hiring can fix that, but only if you know what the load actually is. This article helps you name the tasks, count who holds them, and decide what a hired caregiver can take on and what stays with the family.

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.

Step 1: Write every task the house needs in one week

Use a plain list. Include groceries, rides to appointments, pharmacy pickups, meals, bathing help, bill paperwork, medicine reminders, laundry, and calls to the doctor's office. Do not sort yet. Just write it down.

Write-in line: Task ____ Who does it now ____ How often ____

Step 2: Mark the lines one person holds

Go down the list and circle every line where the same name appears. If that name is on most of the lines, you have a one-person load. This is the signal to act, even if the person says they are fine.

Step 3: Sort the tasks by who may do them

A hired non-medical caregiver can do errands, pick up prescriptions, keep the house in order, and give medication reminders. A caregiver does not hand out, administer, dispense, sort, or manage medicine. Medicine stays with the family, the doctor, and the pharmacist. Mark each line as one of three things: caregiver task, family decision, or clinician or pharmacist task. Anything marked family decision or clinician task needs a named family owner before you hire.

Step 4: Check whether the helper still has a life

Ask the person doing most of the lines to write down the hours they spend on the household in a normal week, and what they gave up to do it. You are not scoring them. You are finding out how much of the week the arrangement has to replace.

Signs the load is real

  1. Most of the lines carry one name.
  2. That person cancels other plans at short notice more than once in a month.
  3. Calls about the household come at hours that are not part of the normal day.
  4. Other relatives say they will help but no line in the list has their name on it.

Signs it is not a caregiver problem

If the list is short, the tasks are spread across several people, and the main gap is one ride a week, a caregiver may be more than you need. In that case, look at the errand and transport options first. The Local Help for Hiring a Caregiver page lists places to start for that kind of gap.

What to write down

Keep the full task list, the name next to each line, the caregiver-task, family-decision, or clinician-task mark, and the one family member who will own the hiring decision. That owner is the person who answers the provider's calls and signs the paper. Without a named owner, the arrangement has no one to come back to when something changes.