Working document
The one page care handoff sheet for your parent's home
Fill this in once, keep it on the refrigerator, and any sibling, aide or paramedic who walks in can take over without a phone call.
Free resources
Free resources for families caring for an aging parent
Everything here is free, written for the adult child doing the coordinating, and meant to be used on a weeknight rather than read for pleasure.
The tools on this page came out of the same conversations over and over: what does twenty hours of aide time actually cost in a year, how many hours of the week is nobody covering, and what does a sister who flies in for a week need to know before she is left alone with the pill organizer. Each one is a single job done properly rather than a general purpose planner.
Alongside them, Kitchen Table Care is our reporting on the money, paperwork and daily logistics of keeping a parent at home, from hospital discharge rights to what a PACE center actually does with a Tuesday. The comparison pages are here too, so you can see honestly where CareCircleLog fits against the other tools families try and where it does not.
Free tools
Free calculators for families paying for care at home
Two numbers decide most caregiving plans: what the paid hours cost each month, and how many hours nobody is covering.
Comparisons
CareCircleLog compared with the tools families already try
Most families land here after a group text, a wall calendar and a paper pill list stopped agreeing about what happened yesterday.
Main guide
How to Reconcile a Parent's Medications After a Hospital Stay
It settles how to turn a discharge summary and a cabinet full of bottles into one medication list every sibling, aide and doctor works from.
Magazine
Kitchen Table Care
Practical reporting on the money, paperwork and daily logistics of caring for an aging parent at home.
About
Who writes all of this
Who writes Kitchen Table Care, why the medication list and the aide schedule turn up in nearly every guide here, and how to reach a real person with a caregiving question the site has not answered yet.
When the printouts stop keeping up
A handoff sheet on the refrigerator door and two calculators will carry a family through the first year. They start failing the week the medication list changes twice, the agency sends a substitute aide on a Tuesday, and nobody can say who gave the evening dose. That is the point where a shared care log earns its keep, and a walkthrough takes about twenty minutes.