The Third Fall Plan Has to Fit the Layout You Have: Match the Response Path to a Ranch, a Split Level, or Two Stories

A fall response plan written for a generic house will fail on the first night in the one Dad actually lives in. Before you write the plan, draw the house one floor at a time and mark where Dad sleeps, where the bathroom is, where the nearest phone sits, and which door a helper or neighbor would use. The shape of the house decides the plan more than any device you buy.

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Ranch or single level

On one floor the response path is short, but it is still a path. Mark the route from the bed to the bathroom, from the bed to the phone, and from the bed to the front or side door. Check the thresholds along that route and the light at each end. The plan is one sheet taped inside the bedroom closet door, with a phone on the nightstand and not only in the kitchen.

Split level

A split level puts half a flight between rooms, and that half flight is the part people forget. Decide which level holds Dad's bed, which level holds the phone he actually uses, and which entry a responder would come through. Keep a phone on the level where he sleeps. Do not assume you will remember the answer in the middle of a call.

Two-story house

Two stories give you two plans. If Dad sleeps upstairs, the plan must cover the stairs at night, the landing light, and whether anyone downstairs can hear a call. If he sleeps downstairs but the only full bath is upstairs, the plan must cover the trip up and back. Whether he should make that trip at night at all is a question for Dad, his doctor, and whoever writes his care plan, not for the family alone.

Match the plan to who is in the house

A plan that depends on one adult lifting Dad off the floor is not a plan for a house with one adult in it. Write down what the household can actually do: make a call, bring a neighbor to the door, reach the right person on the phone. If the response to a fall needs two people, the plan has to say how the second person gets there, or it has to say to call for help and wait.

Write the sheet and test it

Put the plan on one page with the floors drawn, the phone locations, the door codes or key holders, and the name of the first call. Walk it once with the person who will act on it, in the dark, starting from the bed. Then fix the place where the walk stopped. If you are starting from nothing, the order on Start Here lays out the rest of the setup.