How we write this desk, and what it will not do

One reader, one job per page

Every piece on this desk starts from a sentence a real husband types into a search box, in his words, not ours: "she won't let me out of her sight", "can I hire someone just to sit with my wife". The page answers that one question, in the order he would have to act on it, and ends with who to call. If a page tries to answer three questions, we split it.

The voice is plain. We do not call the reader a hero, and we do not tell him how he ought to feel. We write the job, the hour it happens, and the handoff.

Where the facts come from

Every number, program name, deadline and rule links in the sentence that uses it to a public page: Medicare.gov, Missouri's Department of Health and Senior Services and Department of Social Services, the National Institute on Aging, the VA, the Administration for Community Living, or a major nonprofit such as the Alzheimer's Association or the Family Caregiver Alliance. Someone on the desk opens each page, confirms the sentence is really there, and records the date on the sources page.

Phone numbers get a stricter rule. A number is printed only after we have read it on the organization's own page. When a page will not open for us, we link it and leave the number off, and we say so. The local help page shows the check date next to every entry.

Who publishes it

Caring for My Wife is published by OwnersFirm, a company that builds and runs reference sites. The articles carry a desk byline, not a person's name, because no clinician writes here and we do not want anyone to mistake a page for a doctor's opinion.

The paid placement

One company appears on this site, and it pays to be here. New Plan Care Solutions, a non-medical in-home care company independently owned and operated in St. Louis, is a client of OwnersFirm and pays for its featured slot on the front page and for the short boxes at the foot of articles. The two companies are not commonly owned. Every appearance is labeled as paid.

The placement does not buy the articles. Nothing on this desk ranks or scores that company, and nothing here was written to steer you toward it. The form on the front page sends your name, email, optional phone number, how you want to be reached and a short note to New Plan Care Solutions only. Leave medical details out of it.

What this site will not do

• It will not diagnose her or you, predict how an illness will go, or suggest a treatment. Those questions go to her doctor, her therapists or her pharmacist.
• It will not give medication advice beyond "ask her doctor or pharmacist".
• It will not teach lifts or transfers. A page that has never seen her, her weak side or your hallway has no business telling you where to put your feet. Her occupational or physical therapist does.
• It will not print a price it cannot source. No public file lists what a given company charges by the hour, so no hourly figure appears anywhere here.
• It will not rank or criticize hospitals, facilities, hospices or companies.
• It will not enroll anyone in a program or promise eligibility. When a program is named, the link goes to that program's own page.
• It will not invent a story, a quote, a review or a statistic.

Photographs

Photographs on this desk come from Pexels under its free license, or from New Plan Care Solutions, and the caption says which. They show people and rooms, not medical scenes, and nobody pictured is a reader or a client unless the caption says so.

Corrections

Public pages change: a phone line moves, a program closes, a rule is updated. When that happens, the public page is the authority, and we fix our wording on the page itself and update the check date on the sources page. If you find a number that no longer works, or a sentence that does not match the page it links to, treat it as a defect. The fastest way to reach a person connected with this site is the contact line in the footer.