Before You Sign Up for a Help Line, Ask What It Does With Her Details

Families who reach a help line at this stage are rarely looking for a product. They want one phone number that answers, and they want it to answer well at the hard hour. That is a reasonable want. But the first call is also the moment you hand over the most useful facts about your mother: her name, where she lives, what she does when the light goes, and which rooms she tries first. Before you give those facts to anyone, ask the questions below. The answers will tell you more than any brochure.

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.

Ask what they keep and for how long

Ask what details the service writes down when you register her. Ask whether a photo is stored, whether her health conditions are recorded, and whether the notes stay on file after you stop using the service. A good answer is specific: a list of the fields, a plain statement of how long the record is kept, and a way to ask for it to be removed. A vague answer, such as a promise that they keep only what they need, is a reason to slow down, not a reason to walk away. Write down what you were told and the name of the person who told you.

Ask who can see her record

Find out who on the staff can open her file, and whether a family member who is not the account holder can get information. You want to know whether a sibling who lives out of town can ask for her address, and whether the service will confirm anything at all before it checks who is calling. If the service cannot explain its own access rules in a sentence or two, you cannot rely on those rules when a stranger calls.

Ask how changes get made

She will change. Her hair, her clothes, the people she still knows, and the doors she tries will all shift over time. Ask how you update her description, who can make the change, and how long the update takes to show up. Ask whether you can make the change yourself the same day, or whether you must call and wait. A file that is hard to correct is a file that goes stale, and a stale file is worse than none.

Ask what a call sounds like

When you call the number at an ordinary hour, does a person answer, or a recording? If a recording, how long before you reach someone? Ask which hours the people answering actually work, and what they will ask you first. The questions you would want answered at night are the same ones you can ask now, in daylight, when nothing is wrong.

Compare two services with the same five questions

Pick the two or three services you are considering and ask every one the same five questions: what do you keep, who can see it, how do I change it, how do I remove it, and what does a call sound like at night. Put the answers side by side on one sheet. You are not looking for the most reassuring voice. You are looking for the service whose answers are plain, complete, and the same every time you ask. For the list of services that serve West County, see the Lifelines page. For where each fact on this site comes from, see the Sources page.