Caring for someone: the checklist
Written for the person who did not choose this and has no handover notes. The legal group is urgent in a way it does not feel: it gets harder the longer it waits.
41 items
Makes your own editable copy. No account needed.
The items
- Understand the situation
- What the diagnosis is, and what to expect
- Which professionals are involved, and their numbers
- What help is already in place
- What they can still do, and want to keep doing
- What they want — asked directly, and written downAsk now, while they can answer. It settles a hundred later arguments.
- Legal and financial
- Power of attorney, financial and health
- Written consent for professionals to speak to you
- Access to bank accounts, properly and legally arranged
- Benefits and allowances they are entitled to
- Carer's allowance or equivalent for you
- Will and any advance decision
- Insurance and pension providers informed
- Medical
- One written medication list, kept current
- Repeat prescriptions and who collects them
- A calendar of every appointment
- Who drives them, and how
- Allergies and conditions written on one card
- Ask about a medicines review if the list is long
- Day to day
- A shared calendar the whole family can see
- Food, and whether they are actually eating
- Home safety: trip hazards, stairs, the bathroom
- Heating, and whether they can afford it
- Keys, and who else has a set
- A way to call for help that they will actually use
- Someone who visits when you cannot
- Share the load
- Write down who does what, by name
- Ask for the carer's assessment you are entitled to
- Find out what respite exists locally
- Tell your employer and ask what flexibility exists
- Find a carers' group, online or local
- Look after yourself
- Keep your own appointments
- One evening a week that is not this
- Tell someone how it is actually going
- Accept help in the specific form it is offered
- Note what would need to change for this to be unsustainable
Makes your own editable copy. No account needed.
Questions people ask
- What should I sort out first?
- Power of attorney and access to information. Both become far harder once capacity is in doubt, and everything else — banks, benefits, care — depends on them.
- What do carers most often neglect?
- Their own appointments, their own income, and asking for the carer's assessment and respite they are entitled to. Ask early, before you are exhausted.