How to Compare Care Facilities on Paper

Build the comparison sheet before the first visit

Make the sheet first. Homes across the top, questions down the side. Same questions every time, in the same order, filled in the same day.

The reason is memory. After the third visit, details migrate. You will be certain that one of them had a garden, and you will not be certain which. A fixed grid means you are recording rather than reconstructing.

Give every row a heading that has one answer, not a judgement. "Base weekly fee" has an answer. "Value for money" does not, and a row like that will stay blank or be filled in with a mood.

Divide the sheet into four blocks: Facts (collected before you go), Costs, Observations (recorded on the visit), and Answers (what people told you, written verbatim).

Print one copy per home plus a spare, on paper, on a clipboard. Filling this in on a phone while walking round is harder than it sounds and looks worse to the people showing you around. Paper also means you can hand a copy to a sibling without exporting anything.

• Name, address, distance and drive time from you and from your parent's current home
• Type of facility, size, number of rooms, occupancy
• Owner or group, and how long the current manager has been in post
• Date and rating of the most recent published inspection report
• Base fee, what it includes, and how it is billed
• Room sizes available and whether any are currently free
• Waiting list length
• Visiting arrangements
• Named contact and direct phone number
• Date you visited, time of day, and who showed you round

What to collect before you go

Ask for four documents by email before the visit, and read them at home where you can concentrate. A firm that will not send them before a visit has told you something.

The most recent published inspection report, with its date. Regulators publish these, and the date matters as much as the outcome, because a good report from four years ago describes a different building.

The current fee schedule in writing, including the list of extras that sit outside the base fee.

A sample residency or admission agreement. Read the notice period, the fee-increase clause, the deposit terms, the section on what happens if your parent's needs change, and the section that applies if funds run out. These clauses are the ones families discover at the worst possible moment.

Any published staffing information, and the activities programme for the current month.

Read all four with a pen. Every question they raise goes onto the visit sheet. Arriving with six specific questions from their own paperwork changes the entire character of a visit, and it tells you quickly whether the person showing you round knows their own documents.

The visit: what to count, time and look at

Your observations are worth more when they are countable. "It felt busy" fades. "Two staff visible in the main lounge over ten minutes, sixteen residents present" does not.

Visit twice if you can, at different times, and make one of them a mealtime. Late afternoon shows a building differently from eleven in the morning.

Write what you see, not what you conclude. "Three residents had empty cups within reach" is an observation you can compare across four homes. "The care seemed poor" is not comparable and will not survive a conversation with your brother.

Ask to see three specific places, and note whether you are shown them: the laundry, an occupied bedroom with the resident's permission, and the outside space.

• How long from ringing the bell to being let in, and whether anyone greeted you
• Whether you were asked to sign in
• What you could smell on arrival, and again by the door to the lounge
• Staff visible in the main lounge, counted over ten minutes
• Residents out of their rooms versus in them
• Whether the television was on, and whether anyone was watching it
• How long a call bell sounded while you were standing there
• Whether staff used residents' names, and whether residents used staff names
• The noticeboard: what is on it, and whether the date is this week
• Today's menu, and whether there is an alternative
• Corridors at the far end of the building, not just by the entrance
• The garden: state of it, and whether the door to it was unlocked

Questions, grouped by who answers them

Different people know different things, and asking the manager about the round is as unproductive as asking a care assistant about the fee-increase clause. Group your questions by who you will be standing in front of.

For the manager: what is the notice period on both sides, how much notice is given of a fee increase and what were the last three increases, what is the staffing at night, what is staff turnover over the past year, how often is agency staff used, what happens if my parent's needs change, what is the complaints process and how many complaints were made last year, who is our named contact.

For care staff on the floor, asked lightly, in passing: how long have you worked here, how many residents are on your round, who do you tell if you notice something.

For the activities coordinator: what is on this week, what happens at weekends, what happens for someone who prefers to stay in their room.

For a resident's family member, if you meet one: how long has your mum been here, what would you change, does the phone get answered.

Write answers verbatim, in quotation marks. Do not paraphrase into your own words on the day. A paraphrase is already an opinion, and the exact words are what you will want when you compare two homes that both said "it depends."

The cost columns people miss

Compare the annual figure, not the weekly one, and build it from the base fee plus the extras you realistically expect. Two homes forty pounds a week apart on the headline can be thousands apart over a year once the extras are in.

Go through this list item by item and, for each, write "included" or the price. "Ask us nearer the time" is an answer worth recording as it stands.

Then ask three structural questions and write the answers down word for word. How much notice of a fee increase, and what were the increases in each of the last three years. What is the notice period, on both sides, and what applies on death. What happens if private funds run out, and does this home accept state funding for existing residents.

• Hairdressing and foot care
• Escorted trips to appointments, and transport of any kind
• Continence products
• Personal laundry, and whether dry cleaning is separate
• Replacement of named items lost in the laundry
• Telephone line, wifi, television licence
• Newspapers and magazines
• Outings and entertainment
• Meals for visitors
• Deposit or administration fee, and whether it is refundable
• Anything described as a top-up or third-party contribution

Scoring, and deciding with a sibling

Agree the criteria before the first visit, not after the last one. Six to eight of them, written down, weighted or not, but fixed. Retrofitting criteria after the visits is how a decision becomes an argument, because everyone quietly weights the thing their preferred option scored well on.

Score each home one to five on each criterion, and do it in the car outside, within ten minutes of leaving. Not at home that evening.

Then the sibling conversation. Send the completed sheets first, with a note saying you will call in two days. Do not present scores down the phone to someone who has not seen them. People need to read a table before they can discuss it, and a brother who feels ambushed will argue with the process rather than the content.

Agree in advance what counts as a deal-breaker. Distance beyond a stated drive time. A refusal to accept state funding later. A notice period longer than a stated number of weeks. Deal-breakers agreed in advance are quick. Deal-breakers invented afterwards are personal.

When you decide, write one paragraph: which home, on what date, on what grounds, who agreed. Put it at the front of the binder. In six months, on a bad day, you will want to read it.

Questions