📋 How to organise care for an elderly parent

Start by taking stock, not by doing

It's tempting to jump straight into fixing things — booking appointments, tidying the house, taking over the shopping. Before you do, spend an hour working out what help is genuinely needed. It's usually a mix of several different things, and they don't all need the same person or the same urgency.

• Practical tasks — shopping, cooking, cleaning, laundry, gardening
• Personal or household routines — getting up, meals, medication reminders
• Appointments — GP, hospital, dentist, optician, and getting there
• Admin and paperwork — bills, benefits, insurance, letters that need answering
• Social contact — company, phone calls, visits, avoiding isolation

Write this down. It sounds obvious, but a written list turns a vague sense of 'things are hard' into something you can actually plan around and divide up.

Work out who can help with what

Once you can see the list, think honestly about who's realistically able to help with each part — not just who lives nearest, but who has the time, the skills, or the relationship with your parent that suits a particular task. One sibling might be good at admin and hate visiting the GP; another might live too far away to help physically but could take on the phone calls and paperwork.

Have this conversation openly rather than assuming. Resentment builds quickly when one person feels they've been landed with everything by default rather than by agreement.

Put it all in one shared place

However you split the work, everyone involved needs to be able to see the same information — upcoming appointments, current medications, key contacts, and what's already been done. Without this, you end up with duplicated effort, missed appointments, and a lot of 'did anyone call the doctor back?' messages.

This is where a shared system — whether a family organiser app like CareCircle Family, a shared document, or even a well-kept folder — earns its keep. The format matters less than the habit of everyone using the same one, rather than keeping their own private notes.

First-week priorities

If care needs have increased suddenly, don't try to solve everything at once. Focus on the essentials first.

What to gather early on

A short amount of information-gathering now saves a lot of scrambling later, particularly if there's ever an urgent situation and someone unfamiliar needs to step in.

• Key contacts — GP, pharmacy, hospital consultants, social worker if involved
• Appointment history and anything upcoming
• Important documents — insurance, benefits letters, property and utility details
• Daily routines — what a normal day looks like, what your parent manages alone

Avoid becoming the only one who knows anything

In many families, one person — often whoever lives closest — quietly becomes the only one who knows the GP's number, what medication is due when, or when the boiler cover renews. This feels efficient at first but is fragile: if that person is ill, away, or simply exhausted, everything stalls.

Deliberately spread the knowledge. Make sure at least one other person could step in for a week without needing a long handover call. A shared record of contacts, appointments and notes does most of this work automatically.

Review as things change

Needs rarely stay the same for long. What works now may not work in six months, so build in a light-touch review — a monthly catch-up, even a short phone call — to check the current split of tasks still makes sense and nobody's quietly struggling.