Care at home is shaped by the house it happens in. An aide who fits one family's routine can be a poor fit for a split-level with a steep staircase, a dog that needs a fenced yard, or a home where three adults come and go at different hours. Before you ask any agency for an offer, write down the house as it is, then bring that page to every tour.
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.
Walk the house on paper first
Draw each floor in plain lines. Mark the front door, any side or back entrance, the stairs and how many steps they have, each bathroom and the floor it is on, and the main room where the person spends the day. Mark the path between the bed and the bathroom and the path between the chair and the kitchen. These are the routes an aide will use most, and an agency will ask about them.
Name the other people and animals
List everyone who lives in or regularly enters the home, including adults who work and children on a school schedule. Note any animal in the house, what kind it is, and where it spends the day. Ask each agency how its aides handle animals and whether it will assign a particular aide when an animal is part of the home. Ask what the rule is for entry when the family is out.
Check the access before the first day
Note where a car can park, whether the street is narrow, and whether the front door can be reached without a key. Ask who holds the keys or codes and how they would be handled, but keep the detail for the access setup rather than the first meeting. The question here is simply whether the house can be reached safely at the hours the agency would work.
Match each agency to the page
At the tour, read your house sketch aloud and ask the agency to explain, in its own words, how an aide would move through it on a first visit. Write the answer beside the sketch. An agency that has to be walked through the layout twice is telling you something about how it plans. An agency that asks its own questions about the stairs, the animals, and the other people has done the work.
Do not hand a single aide the whole house on a guess. The sketch is the working record, and it changes when the house changes.