All departments
Department 08
A department of the publication
Living well at home
Keeping an ordinary life ordinary, for as long as it can be.
Guides in this department
Guides for describing what you see, not deciding what it means.
From here each guide opens as a working document. Every one names its sources and says what it deliberately doesn’t claim.
- Helping a parent keep doing things for themselvesStepping in can feel like the kind thing to do. This guide is about doing everyday tasks alongside a parent, at their pace, and knowing which questions belong with their care team.
- Changes that can make a parent's home easier to live inFrom where the saucepans live to a second banister, there is a wide range of changes people consider. Here is that range, and why the right ones are worked out with your parent.
- Keeping a parent's privacy when you help at homeHelping in someone else's home means being in their space, their cupboards and their day. Ways to give help that keeps your parent's privacy, and their say, intact.
- Loneliness, being alone and staying connected in later lifeLiving alone and feeling lonely are not the same thing, and a full diary doesn't settle either. What health bodies and charities say about the difference, and how families can support connection without running it.
- Help with everyday tasks and getting out of the houseShopping, cleaning, appointments and the trip to see a friend all take some getting to. The kinds of help families and parents put together, and why getting out is about more than errands.
- Keeping meals and daily routines feeling like theirsThe time breakfast goes on the table, the plate they always use, who sits where: the small rhythms of a day are part of a life. How families can help with meals and routines and leave them recognisably your parent's own.
Articles in this department
Shorter pieces that belong to this question.
2 articles in this department. Each carries a subject, which says what is changing; the department says which question it belongs to.
- The shape of a day belongs to the person living itToast at the counter, lunch at one, a neighbour with a cake tin on Thursdays. A look at meals as company and habit, and at who decides how a day runs.Eating and routineLiving well
- Why loneliness is hard to see from the outsideA week can sound full from across the table. How it felt is a question only the person who lived it can answer.Staying connectedLiving well
How we source
Carefulness, made visible.
Named, not counted
Each guide names its sources and tags each one Primary or Secondary. It never counts sources at you.
Under-claiming on purpose
Where no authority sets a threshold, we say so rather than inventing one.
Naming the limit
Every guide names where its authority ends, and who to ask instead.