HACKER Q&A
📣 jph

Care plan template for elderly parents – can you suggest improvements?


Hi HN, my elderly parents have dementia and cancer, and I'm learning about how to write a care plan template for my family members and caregivers.

I'm sharing a first draft, and I'm seeking constructive advice about what to add, to make it more helpful, thorough, and easy to use for more people.

https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/care-plan

So far, each item in the plan is because of an actual communication breakdown or problem-- what I'm learning is elder care is challenging. I'm hoping this free open source care plan template may help people.

AMA & thank you!

  👤 softwaredoug Accepted Answer ✓
I learned late in my Dads time in a nursing home I should pay for as much support as I can. Elder care attorneys and private social workers to help assess the situation, check in, help give my dad a voice. Even I, a person without any mental impairment, could hon hope to understand the complex programs in the US like Medicaid, VA, Medicare. It’s a hodgepodge.

Also contact a good estate lawyer. Who can often be the same as elder care lawyer. They’ll help you get a lot of the estate and also powers of attorney in order.

Parents may not cooperate or understand. That gets really hard and can burn people out. So take care of yourself too.

Best of luck to you

👤 sloaken
Joel,

Thank you for putting this together. My dad is getting very old and I plan to discuss what you have here with my brothers.

On a related note, when my mother and aunt passed, I learned to do a couple things:

1) What do they want for final arrangements? e.g. burial site / cremation / funeral mass

2) if buried, it is important to make arrangements while they are alive. They do not charge more if dead, but they do give discounts if alive. I know same thing, but I believe the semantics are a legal issue

3) if a mass, what kind and type? My cousins who were caring for my aunt were of a different religion, so I was asked to figure it out. Lot of pressure for something I was not familiar with doing.

Once again, thank you for your template.

👤 beardyw
Suggest you add USA in the title. In a similar position in the UK and need maybe 5% of all that.