Most families picture a caregiver as someone who is in the room. In practice the shift depends on whether the caregiver can see your parent from where they will stand or sit. The recliner, the bed, the kitchen table and the bathroom door each put your parent at a different distance from the front door, the stairs and the stove. Before you write the shift, learn where your parent actually spends the hours you want covered and whether one place in the house can watch most of them.

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: Name the spots your parent uses

Walk the house at the time the shift would start. Write down every place your parent stays for more than a few minutes at a time, including the chair, the bed, the bathroom, the kitchen table and any window they watch from.

Spot 1: ______________________

Spot 2: ______________________

Spot 3: ______________________

Spot 4: ______________________

Step 2: Find the post that sees the most

Stand in the spot where the caregiver would normally sit or stand. Check whether you can see each spot from Step 1, the front door, the foot of the stairs and the route to the bathroom. Mark each one yes or no. A post that sees only the chair and misses the bathroom door is a different job from one that sees the whole ground floor.

Post location: ______________________

Spots visible from the post: ______________________

Spots not visible: ______________________

Step 3: Mark the blockers

Write down anything that breaks the line of sight: a door that closes, a recliner turned toward the television, a hallway corner, a bathroom door that locks from the inside, a room with its own separate entrance. For each one, decide with the family whether it can be changed before the first shift, such as leaving a door open or moving a chair, or whether the schedule has to work around it.

Blocker and fix: ______________________

Blocker and fix: ______________________

Step 4: Ask the candidate about the post

Before you agree to a schedule, ask these questions and write down the answers:

1. Where will you spend most of the shift, and why there?

2. From that spot, what can you see and what can you not see?

3. How often will you check the spots you cannot see, and how will you do it?

4. If your parent is in a room you cannot see, what do you do first?

5. Will you need the family to move furniture or open doors, and who decides that?

Answers to listen for: a named post, a named list of spots, a check that is regular and specific, and a plan that does not depend on your parent calling out. Signs to walk away: 'I will keep an eye out' with no place named, a refusal to say where they will sit, or a plan that works only if your parent never leaves the chair.

Step 5: Write the rule into the shift note

A visible post is not enough if the shift note does not say so. Put the post, the check interval and the blocker decisions into the written schedule, so the next person who covers the shift follows the same route.

Post: ______________________

Spots to check: ______________________

Check interval set by the family: ______________________

Blocker decisions: ______________________

First 72 hours

On the first shift, have the family walk the route with the caregiver before the family leaves the house. On the second shift, ask the caregiver to tell you what they could and could not see at each check. On the third day, compare those notes against the post you wrote down. If a spot keeps falling out of view, change the post or the blocker rule, not the caregiver's memory.

For the broader sequence of hiring steps, see Start Here: Five Steps to Hiring.