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

[jph]

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!

[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.

[jph → sloaken]

Added. Thank you. I wish you well with your dad and your brothers.

[softwaredoug]

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

[joegahona → softwaredoug]

This is very good advice:

> 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.

This has been worth every penny, because the laws are infuriating and boring. I need someone to wade through all that for me. My estate/elder lawyer helped me get power of attorney in order, and also explained how the will works, how it's saved in digital form, how often to get it refreshed, etc. She also knew the wrinkles of benefits my father gets because he's a military veteran -- there's no way I would've learned that stuff on my own.

Thanks, OP, for this thread and the work you're putting into this. This is a point on your checklist:

> Hire an accountant who can manage the finances, ideally including taxes, insurance, payments, bank accounts, benefits disbursements, retirement planning, and more.

My advice to anyone reading this is don't underestimate this point, and dig into it. There are finances that can be handled by a financial planner, but there's also really annoying swamps that a financial planner isn't as useful in, which I'm dealing with now -- e.g., financial distributions from a deceased spouse, that same deceased spouse's name being on a joint bank account. The various institutions can be really old-school and annoying to deal with: long wait times on the phone, inconsistent bureaucracy to prove you have power of attorney, insistence on talking to your parent, who might be slow and confused, etc. It has sometimes required I take a PTO day from work, because of how exhausting it is.

[jph → softwaredoug]

Thank you. All great points. I'm adding your points now.

[beardyw]

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

[jph → beardyw]

Good idea. I'll add a headline "Specifics for United States". Is there anything that you suggest to add/change that would be specifics for the UK?

[beardyw → jph]

Not really. I think things are very different. His health needs are overseen by his general practice. Getting power of attorney is just done online on the government website, with a form printed off, signed and returned. No lawyers!