The home visit: what to have ready, what to ask, what to do with the answers

Before the visit: what to have ready on the table

Confirm three things when the appointment is booked: how long the visit will last, whether your parent needs to be there for all of it (they do), and whether you may be present. Ask whether a written report is produced as standard and who receives a copy.

Have these out and ready before the OT arrives, so the hour goes on the house rather than on hunting for paperwork.

One more piece of preparation, and it is the one that pays: write your list of worries in advance. The three places in this house that make you uneasy. The stair, the step down to the garden, the bath. You will not remember them under the pressure of someone else's questions, and they are the reason you asked for the visit.

• A written list of the rooms your parent actually uses in a day, and the ones they no longer go into
• Your list of the three places in the house that worry you most
• Any equipment already in the house, out where it can be seen — including anything in a cupboard that was never used
• The current printed medication list, if the OT asks for it — do not summarise from memory
• A note of what your parent did unaided a year ago and does differently now, with dates if you have them, as observations only
• A tape measure and a notebook
• Your phone, for photographs, and your parent's permission to take them
• The names and numbers of anyone else already involved, and who you would like the report sent to
• A pen for your parent too, if they want to write their own questions

What the visit usually involves

Expect the OT to watch ordinary things being done, in the actual rooms, rather than asking about them. Getting out of the chair. Getting to the bathroom. Making a cup of tea. Getting in and out of the front door. They are looking at the person and the room together, which is why it has to happen in the house and not in a clinic.

Expect it to be tiring for your parent, and expect your parent to perform better than usual for a visitor. That performance is normal and worth flagging: if what you saw this morning was not what the OT is seeing now, say so plainly, and say what you saw and when.

Do not fill the silences. Let your parent answer, even slowly. The gap between what your parent says they can do and what the OT observes is often the most useful thing to come out of the hour, and you will talk over it if you are nervous.

At the end, expect recommendations. Ask for them in writing. Verbal recommendations evaporate within a week, and you cannot get a quote against a memory.

The questions to ask while they are still in each room

Ask these as you move through the house, not in a lump at the end. The answers are more specific when the person is standing in the room they are talking about.

Write each answer next to the room name in your notebook. Photograph anything they point at, and photograph it from where your parent would be standing.

• If you changed one thing in this room first, what would it be?
• What is the cheapest version of that, and what is the better version?
• Is this something I can buy, or does it need someone qualified to fit it?
• Who measures it, and does it need to be measured before it is ordered?
• Is this normally rented or bought, and who supplies it locally?
• Is there anything here you would take away rather than add?
• What in this room is likely to become a problem in the next year?
• Which of your recommendations is the most urgent, and which can wait?
• Will you put this in writing, and when will the report arrive?
• Who else gets a copy of the report, and can it go to my sibling as well?
• Is there anything you would want to look at again after the changes are made?
• Is there anything you have seen today that I should tell my parent's doctor about, and how is that normally passed on?

The questions about who pays and who installs

These are the questions that decide whether the report becomes a house or stays a document. Ask them before the OT leaves.

Ask which of the recommendations are typically funded, and by whom, in your area — and ask who applies. Ask whether the OT's service does any of the installation itself, or whether it hands you a list. Ask whether there is a local scheme, a charity, or an agency that fits small items, and get the name and number.

Ask whether anything on the list needs a professional installer for safety reasons rather than convenience, and write that down clearly — that is the line between the Saturday job list and the job you pay for.

Ask about lead times. "How long, realistically, from ordering to installed?" is worth asking for every item, because it determines the order in which you do them.

Ask what happens next in their service: is there a follow-up visit, do you have to ask for one, and who do you ring if something changes. Get a direct number and a name, not a switchboard, and write both in the binder.

Turning the report into a job list with quotes against it

The report is a document. The job list is a table, and it is the thing that actually changes the house.

Make one row per recommendation, with these columns: item, room, urgency as the OT ranked it, buy or fit, who supplies it, quote, ordered on, arrived on, fitted on, paid by whom.

Get quotes for the two or three items that need an installer, from two suppliers each, and put both quotes in the row. Send the table to your siblings before you spend anything. A table with quotes in it is the most persuasive object in a family disagreement about money, because it is not an opinion.

Do the cheap and fast items first, even if they are not the most urgent, so that something visibly happens in the first fortnight. Momentum matters, and your parent needs to see that a stranger came to the house and something improved.

Tick and date every row as it completes. Keep the receipts stapled to the printed table, and keep the OT's original report behind it. If a second visit ever happens, that table is what you hand over.

Photograph, file, and set the date to look again

Take a photograph of each room before anything changes, from the doorway, and one after. This takes four minutes and it is the only record of what was done and when. Put the date in the filename.

File in one place: the OT's written report, your notebook pages from the visit, the job table, the quotes, the receipts, the product manuals, and the photographs. One tab in the binder, in date order.

Write the direct number of the OT service on the front of that tab, along with the name of the person who visited and the date. In eight months, when something changes, the hardest part of getting a second visit is finding the number.

Put a date in your calendar six months out that simply says "look at the house again." Houses drift. A rail gets used as a coat hook, a rug comes back out of the cupboard, a chair moves. Ten minutes with the original report in your hand tells you whether it has.

And send one copy of the finished job table to every sibling, including the one who does nothing. It is the single clearest evidence of what is actually being done.

Questions