How to Organise a Parent's Move to Assisted Living

Start with the date, then work backwards

Everything hangs off one fixed point: the date the new room is available and the fees start. Get that in writing before you plan anything else.

Then list the other fixed points. The notice period on the current home, whether rented or being sold. The removal firm's availability, which in summer can be three or four weeks out. The day your parent will actually sleep in the new room, which is often not the day the van comes.

Six weeks is a comfortable run. Four is doable. Two is possible but you will be paying someone to do the parts you cannot.

A workable six-week shape looks like this. Week six: gather paperwork, get the room dimensions, confirm what the facility provides. Week five: sort belongings by destination, decide what moves. Week four: book the removal firm, order name labels, confirm the furniture list against the floor plan. Week three: start the address changes. Week two: pack everything that is not needed daily. Week one: pack the first-night box, confirm arrival times with the facility, take final meter readings.

Write the plan on one page with a date against every line. It will change. A plan that changes is still a plan.

The admissions folder: what they usually ask for

Facilities differ, but the admissions pack asks for broadly the same things. Assembling them in advance turns a stressful morning into a signature.

Build a physical folder with six tabs: Identity and Contacts, Insurance and Fees, Medical Contacts, Signed Agreements, Personal Profile, Copies Given.

The medicine list is the one people get wrong. Do not write it from the cupboard or from memory. Ask your parent's surgery or physician's office for a current printed list, dated, and hand that over. If the facility wants medicines delivered in a particular packaging, they will tell you what and by when. That is their process and their responsibility.

Keep a simple issue log at the back of the folder: document, date requested, date supplied, who received it. Admissions offices lose things, and a log means you resupply in thirty seconds instead of rebuilding the whole pack.

• Photo ID and proof of the current address
• Insurance cards and policy numbers
• Doctor's name, practice address, phone number. Same for the pharmacy
• A current printed medicine list, obtained from the surgery, not written by you
• Allergies as recorded by the practice
• Next of kin and emergency contacts, in the order they should be called
• Details of anyone holding formal legal authority to sign, with the document itself
• The residency agreement and the written fee schedule
• Any advance directive, if one exists, as a copy
• Funeral plan or insurance details, if held
• Food preferences and dislikes
• The personal profile form: what they like to be called, their routine, their work, their hobbies, who visits

What actually fits in the room

Ask the facility for the room dimensions and, if they have one, a floor plan, before you decide a single item of furniture. Then ask the questions that decide the rest.

What is already in the room? Many places supply the bed and a wardrobe, and a second wardrobe will not fit. How wide is the door and the corridor to it? Is there a lift, and what is its internal depth? Are there rules about upholstered furniture needing a fire label? Can anything be fixed to the wall, and who does it? Is there a TV aerial point and wifi, and what is not permitted in rooms.

Draw the room on squared paper at one centimetre to ten. Cut out paper rectangles for each candidate piece, sized from your own measurements, and move them around on the table. It takes twenty minutes and it prevents the moment when a wardrobe stands in a corridor.

Measure every candidate piece three ways: width, depth, height. The armchair is the piece that matters most and the one most often forgotten in the rush, because it is the thing they sit in every day.

Photograph the current bedroom and living room before packing. Arranging the new room to echo the old one is the cheapest kindness available.

The first-night box and the first-week box

The first-night box travels in your car. It never goes on the van, and it is not sealed with tape.

Pack it as though the van will be delayed by a day, because occasionally it is. Everything in it should be either something they use at bedtime or something that makes the room feel like theirs by nine o'clock in the evening.

Label clothing before the move, not after. Every item, name in permanent marker inside the collar or on the care label, or woven labels if you have the notice. Laundry is communal in most places and unlabelled clothes go missing in the first fortnight, without exception.

The first-week box follows on the van and gets unpacked with them: the rest of the clothes, the radio, the wall calendar, the photographs, the chair cushion, the good mug. Do not unpack it before they arrive. Unpacking together gives them something to do on a day when everyone else is doing everything.

• The pillow they actually use, plus a full made-up bedding set
• Nightclothes, dressing gown, slippers
• Toiletries in a named wash bag, and a towel
• A change of clothes for the next morning
• Medicines in whatever container the facility asked for, handed to staff on arrival
• Glasses, hearing aid with spare batteries, denture pot
• Phone and charger, both labelled with their name
• The address book and a written list of who to ring
• One framed photograph for the bedside
• A lamp with a working bulb in it
• Toilet roll, tissues, a bottle of water
• Pen, notebook, and the TV remote if the TV is going

Address changes and account switches

This is the part that runs on for weeks after the move if you do not run it as a list.

Make a tracking table with six columns: organisation, account number, contacted on, method used, confirmed on, notes. Work down it. The "confirmed on" column is the whole point, because roughly one in five changes does not take the first time and you will only find out when a letter goes to an empty house.

Book the post redirection at least a week before the move. It usually needs identification and it is the single highest-value item on this list.

At the old property, take final meter readings and photograph each meter with something showing the date in the frame. Note the readings in the table too.

Do not cancel anything at the new address before you know what the facility already provides. Some include a phone line, wifi and a TV licence. Some do not, and the answers vary room by room in the same building.

• Banks and building societies. Pension providers. State pension or social security
• Tax office, and council tax or property tax
• Doctor's surgery, dentist, optician, pharmacy
• Insurance: home, contents, car, life, travel, funeral plan
• Utilities at the old address, with final readings photographed
• Broadband and phone line, checking the cancellation notice period
• TV licence and any streaming or magazine subscriptions
• Post redirection, booked a week ahead
• Standing orders to charities, clubs and societies
• The newspaper, the milk, the hairdresser, the neighbours

The first two weeks

Almost every problem in the first fortnight is administrative rather than anything else. Missing clothes. A phone that will not charge. Post going to the old address. Nobody knowing who to ring at nine in the evening.

So settle the administration on day one. Ask the facility, and write the answers down: who is our named contact, what number do we call at night, when is the first review meeting, how does laundry work and what happens when something goes missing, where does post go, and what are the visiting arrangements.

Agree a visiting pattern with the family and write it on a calendar. Little and often beats one long visit, and a written pattern stops the situation where four people come on Sunday and nobody comes on Wednesday.

Keep a two-week log: date, who visited, what was asked for, what you brought, what still needs doing. It is a small habit and it makes the first review meeting straightforward, because you arrive with facts instead of impressions.

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