The arrangement is not held together by how much you do. It is held together by the things that have exactly one person behind them — and that person is you.

What the week actually contains

Nothing is saved and nothing leaves the page. Mark what the person needs in an ordinary week — not what a good week looks like. Then say who else is there, and for each of them, only what they could genuinely do tomorrow without being taught anything first.

Why the singletons are the whole of it

• These arrangements do not end gradually. They end on a Tuesday, because the carer has a temperature of 39 and nobody else knows which tablets go in the morning. What follows is an emergency admission or an emergency placement, decided in a day by people who have never met either of you — which is the outcome almost every carer says they were trying to avoid.
• The number of hours is not the risk. The number of things only you can do is the risk. Somebody doing four hours a day of tasks that three people could cover is in a far safer position than somebody doing two hours that nobody else has ever done. Carers count the hours because the hours are what they feel; the tasks with one pair of hands behind them are what actually decides whether the arrangement survives a week of flu.
• Some of it fails in hours and some of it can wait a month, and the difference is not obvious. Medicines, a lift out of a chair, drinks in hot weather and somebody who would notice a fall at night are same-day problems. Laundry, shopping and the bills are not. Carers routinely protect the visible tasks and leave the fast-failing invisible ones with one person behind them.
• "Being shown once" is not the same as "trained or authorised". Anybody willing can bring a meal or sit with somebody. Being shown once is enough for a repeat prescription or a lift to an appointment. Personal care, moving somebody who cannot bear their own weight, and giving medicines are a different category, and pretending otherwise is how people get hurt — both of them.
• Asking for general help almost always fails; asking for one specific thing almost always works. "Can you help with Mum?" gives the other person no idea what they are agreeing to, so they agree to nothing. "Could you do Thursday evenings — the meal and the tablets, I will write it down and show you once" is a thing a person can say yes or no to, and most people say yes.
• Nobody outside can see any of this. There is no record anywhere of what you do, and services generally only find out when it stops. That is why the one-page handover — what happens when, what must not be missed, who to call — is worth more than any amount of explaining, and why it has to exist before it is needed rather than during the crisis.

The four speeds

This is the sort the tool applies. It describes how fast something becomes a real problem if nobody does it — not how important it feels, and not what any service where you live would call urgent.

• Within hours. Medicines at the right time, getting to the toilet, being moved or lifted, drinks, a meal that is actually eaten, and somebody who would know if there was a fall in the night. If one of these has one person behind it, the arrangement does not survive that person having a bad night, let alone a hospital admission.
• By tomorrow. Washing and dressing, and somebody laying eyes on the person each day. A day of these missed is uncomfortable and unsafe rather than catastrophic — but two days is how a small problem becomes an admission.
• Within a week. Shopping, laundry, repeat prescriptions, getting to appointments. These are the ones people cover first because they are visible, and they are rarely the ones that end the arrangement.
• Within a month. Bills and money, the state of the house, and company that is not a task. Slow, and genuinely serious: the last of these is the one that carers drop first and the one that keeps the person out of hospital longest.
• The question that sorts them. Not "how important is this?" but "if nobody did this from tomorrow morning, when would it become a problem somebody outside would notice?" That is answerable about your own week, and it is the only ranking this page uses.

The ask that works

Every carer has been told to ask for help, and almost none have been told what an askable request looks like. It has four parts, and leaving any of them out is usually why the last one failed.

• One named thing, not a category. "The tablets and the evening meal" — not "help with Dad". A category asks somebody to imagine an open-ended commitment, and most people decline an open-ended commitment out of fear rather than unwillingness.
• One named slot, not availability. "Thursday evenings" — not "when you can". A slot can be diarised, refused, or swapped. Availability cannot.
• An end, or a review. "For the next two months, then we look at it again." Almost nobody refuses a thing with an end on it, and almost everybody hesitates over a thing without one.
• Written down, and shown once. A single page — what happens when, what must not be missed, who to call — plus one occasion where they do it with you standing there. That is the whole of what makes a person feel able to say yes.
• Ask the person who owes you nothing. Neighbours, colleagues and old friends refuse less often than the family member everybody assumes should do it, because the family member usually carries a history and the neighbour carries a Thursday.
• Ask separately, and ask for different things. Three people each doing one specific thing is far more robust than one person promising to help in general, and it survives one of the three moving away.
• If everything comes back no, that is information, not a verdict on you. An arrangement in which the answer is genuinely no from everybody is an arrangement that needs a service rather than a rota, and the useful next step is finding out what exists where you live and what it costs — which this page cannot tell you, because it differs in every country and often in every municipality.

What to do this week

In this order. The first three cost nothing and need nobody's agreement.

• Write the page. One side of paper: the day in order, the medicines and their times, the two or three things that must never be missed, the address, and the numbers — the doctor, the pharmacy, the person to call at night. It takes forty minutes once and it is the single most useful object in the whole arrangement.
• Put it where somebody would find it. On the fridge or by the front door, not in your bag. The situation in which it matters is the one where you are not there to hand it to anybody.
• Solve the same-day singletons first. Not the shopping. The tablets, the lift, the drinks, the person who would notice a fall — those are what turn one bad night of yours into somebody else's emergency.
• Teach one person one short list. One evening, standing beside them while they do it. A person who has done it once will do it again; a person who has only been told about it will not.
• Get a key to somebody who is not you. A neighbour, a relative, a keysafe. Most of the worst outcomes in this situation come down to nobody being able to get in.
• Find out what exists where you live before you need it. What is available, what it costs, what the waiting time is, and what has to be arranged in advance. Doing this in a crisis means taking the first thing offered.
• Book something for yourself in the diary, with a name on it. Not "rest" — an appointment, an evening, a person expecting you. Unbooked time is the first thing that disappears, and your own health is the load-bearing wall of the entire arrangement.

What people believe, and what is so

The drill: 16 days

Sixteen ordinary moments — the flu you carried on through, the sister who offers vaguely, the week in hospital, the neighbour with the key, the holiday nobody booked. Each has an answer that keeps everything running today and one that makes the arrangement survive a day without you. Pick the one that holds up; every answer explains why.

The page

The one-side-of-paper handover. Fill it in once, put it where somebody would find it, and update it when the medicines change.

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