Read this first
There are no numbers on this page and nothing on it is clinical. It describes what a non-medical caregiver does in somebody's house, which is a matter of ordinary daily life rather than treatment.
Nothing here is a care plan for the person you care for. Real plans are built by a provider with the family, in the house, and the medical side of the picture belongs with a doctor.
The rest of the site starts at the front page.
A day of support at home is mostly ordinary
People imagine something medical, or something institutional. In practice it is closer to a familiar person letting themselves in and putting the kettle on.
The hardest part of describing this work is that it sounds like nothing. There is no equipment, no uniform in most cases, no procedure to point at. Written down, an afternoon of it reads like a list of chores.
That is exactly why it works, and it is also why families underestimate it for so long. What a person with an unreliable memory needs most is not intervention. It is a day with a shape, in a house they know, with someone in it who is not anxious.
So here is the ordinary version, roughly in the order it tends to happen. None of it is a rule and no two households run the same way.
Arriving
Consistency starts before anyone does anything. The same person, on the same days, at the same time, through the same door. A caregiver who changes every week is a stranger every week, and for someone whose recent memory is thin, a stranger in the house is a small crisis rather than a help. Continuity of the individual is the single most valuable thing a family can ask a provider about, and it is worth asking directly.
The first few minutes are usually just conversation. What kind of night it was. What the weather is doing. Whether the cat has been fed. This is not filler. It is the caregiver reading the day, and it is often where they notice that something is different.
Orientation, gently
Somewhere early on, the day gets located. The day of the week, what is happening today, who is coming later. Done well this is conversational rather than a quiz, because being tested is unpleasant and being reminded is not.
Households often build props for this: a large clock, a whiteboard by the kettle, a calendar with one thing written on each day. The caregiver keeps them current, which is a small job that stops being done the moment nobody is there to do it.
Prompting is not doing it for them
The skill in this work is doing the least that is needed. A person who can still butter their own toast should butter their own toast, even if it takes a while and the kitchen ends up untidy. Independence that gets taken away for the sake of speed does not come back. A good caregiver hovers less than a worried family does, and that is often a relief to everybody.
Meals
Food is where a lot of this quietly turns. Meals at consistent times, in the same familiar spot, with the television off, is the general shape most guidance converges on. The National Institute on Aging publishes a public page of tips for helping people with Alzheimer's disease eat well that covers this in more detail than a site like this one should attempt.
The practical work is mundane. Someone cooks, someone sits and eats with them, someone notices that the milk is off and puts it in the bin. Eating alone is a large part of why older people stop eating properly, and company at the table is a genuine part of the job rather than a nicety.
The middle of the day
Laundry, tidying, a walk if there is one to be had, the post, the plants, a bit of television, a bit of talking. Activities that suit the person as they are now rather than as they were, which the NIA covers in its guidance on adapting activities for people with Alzheimer's disease.
Personal care, where it is part of the arrangement, usually sits in here or at the start of the day. Bathing, dressing and grooming are the parts families find hardest to hand over and often the parts that most need handing over, particularly between a parent and an adult child. The NIA has a public page on bathing, dressing and grooming.
Supervision, which mostly means presence
The word sounds clinical and the reality is not. It means somebody is in the house while the oven is on. It means the front door is not opened at four in the morning without anyone knowing. It means a slip on the stairs is found in a minute rather than in a day.
Households usually make small changes alongside it, and the NIA keeps a list of home safety tips for this. Most of them are unremarkable and cheap, which is a fair description of most of what actually keeps people safe at home.
Leaving, and the handover
The end of a shift is where the family gets its information. What was eaten, how the mood was, what was different. Written down somewhere everyone can see it, this is how a family notices a slow change instead of being surprised by it, and it is how a doctor gets a useful account at the next appointment instead of a vague one.
And the relief this buys the family
The other half of the work is not done for the person with memory loss at all. It is done for whoever has been holding the arrangement together, and it is called respite. The National Institute on Aging explains what respite care is, and separately writes about caring for yourself while caring for someone.
A regular few hours where the usual caregiver is not on duty is not time off from a relationship. It is what makes the relationship survivable over years rather than months, and families who arrange it early tend to keep someone at home considerably longer than families who wait until they are desperate.
What is not on this list
Everything clinical. A non-medical caregiver does not diagnose, does not treat, does not change a dose, does not decide what a symptom means, and does not perform nursing tasks. Reminding somebody that it is time to take the tablets in their own box is prompting; deciding which tablets those should be is medicine, and it belongs to a clinician. That line is not a formality, and a provider who is vague about which side of it they sit on is telling you something.
The clinical service that does cross that line is home health care, which is a separate category with its own rules and its own funding. A neighbouring site in this network compares the two in home health versus home care in Missouri, and it is worth reading before you start ringing round, because a lot of families spend weeks shopping in the wrong category.
How the featured provider describes its own work
We do not verify service descriptions and we do not restate them as fact. What follows is attributed, not endorsed.
On its own website, New Plan Care says that its caregivers in St. Louis offer specialized in-home care for individuals living with dementia, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and other chronic illnesses, with condition-specific training
, and it lists among its levels of service a specialized care tier described as caregivers with advanced skills for chronic conditions such as dementia, cardiac events, or hospice support
. Those are the company's own words, published on newplancare.com. They are a description of a non-medical service. Whether any of it fits your household is a question for a conversation with them, and the medical questions underneath it are for a doctor.
Featured placement
New Plan Care
Independently owned in-home care serving St. Louis and the surrounding communities.
About this listing. New Plan Care is a client of OwnersFirm, the company that publishes this site, and this placement is paid for. It is not a rating, nothing on this page measured it, and no survey result on this site had any bearing on it appearing here. New Plan Care describes its own services as including in-home support for people living with dementia and Alzheimer's disease. That is a description of a non-medical service: help with routine, meals, companionship and supervision in a person's own home. It is not medical treatment, it is not a diagnosis, and no one here is a clinician. Call (314) 405-0887.