Home Care Check starts a search with a sentence, not a list. Before any agency name goes on the page, write one line that says what help is needed, which tasks it covers, which hours it covers, and who covers when the usual person is away. That line is the first entry on the check sheet, and every agency that follows is measured against it.
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.
The four parts of a usable sentence
A sentence that can be checked names four things. First, the person who needs help, by role if not by name, such as the parent, the spouse, or the adult child at the house. Second, the tasks, named as plain jobs such as meals, bathing help, dressing, laundry, or rides to non-medical errands. Third, the hours, given as a window such as weekday mornings or overnight. Fourth, the gap, meaning who covers the job when the usual helper is away.
A sentence that names all four is a need an agency can be checked against. A sentence that says only that the family is worried is not yet a need, and an agency cannot be checked against a worry.
How to tell you have it
Run the sentence against your own week. If you can name a task you cannot cover, a window when nobody is free, and a day when the gap shows, the need is real and written. If you can name the feeling but not the task, keep writing until the task appears. Mark each part of the sentence as one of two things: a fact you observed in the house, such as a task left undone, or an editorial guess, such as a concern the family has not yet tested. Only the observed facts go on the check sheet as facts.
What the sentence does not decide
The sentence does not choose an agency, a price range, or a type of help. Whether the job is non-medical care or home health is a separate question with a separate public record, and the site's comparison of the two categories explains which record to check. Health questions go to the family's doctor, not to the agency and not to this sentence.
Keep the sentence in the file. When the family later compares agencies, it is the yardstick.
Next step: Home health versus non-medical home care: which record to check. Once the category is set, the lookup method is in How to check any home health agency in five federal lookups.