When the parent who did the caring dies first

This page says "she" for the parent who was doing the caring and "he" for the one left behind. Swap them round if that is the wrong way around in your family.

A day only shows you the obvious jobs. Washing, dressing, meals and medicines are visible to anyone who stays the night. The pill box filled on a Sunday, the prescription ordered at the end of the month and the call to the surgery when he went off his food are all care, and none of them appear in a single day. The gaps they leave arrive in week three.

Three things help you build it. Ask your father to talk you through an ordinary Tuesday and then an ordinary Sunday, because the two are different. Look at the kitchen calendar, the pill box and three months of bank statements. Then ask the people who saw them week by week: the surgery, the pharmacy, a neighbour with a key.

Write it where the family can see it and put a name against each line. Sharing care between siblings covers dividing a list like this, and when siblings disagree about care helps if the family is pulling in different directions. For the version a paid carer works from, read the care plan guide and what a carer can do in an hour. When one parent is caring for the other describes the arrangement from the inside.

The administration has its own order, and the government sets it out so no family has to work it out alone. GOV.UK has a step by step guide to what to do after a death, and Tell Us Once reports it in one go to HM Revenue and Customs, the Department for Work and Pensions, the DVLA and the local council. That matters here because the council is one of those told, and both the council tax and the benefits change.

If your father is alone tonight with nothing in place, emergency care is the page for the day it happens, and what to do while you wait covers holding things together until somebody can start. Where he needs help around the clock rather than at set times, emergency live-in care explains how a carer can be in the house at short notice. Morning calls, lunch calls and tucking-in calls sets out what each visit covers, and overnight care covers the nights.

There are two reasons to slow this down, and neither is sentimental. Shock changes how somebody copes in a way that does not last. A man who cannot make a cup of tea in the week after his wife dies may be doing his own breakfast by November, and if it is settled in week one nobody finds out.

The law also starts from his own view of his life. The Care Act 2014 requires a council promoting an adult's wellbeing to have regard to "the importance of beginning with the assumption that the individual is best-placed to judge the individual's well-being", and it counts control over day-to-day life and suitable living accommodation among the things wellbeing is made of. An adult with mental capacity is entitled to decide where he lives, including staying somewhere his children find frightening. Can an elderly person be forced into care in the UK? sets out that line, and mental capacity and how it is assessed matters if he can no longer weigh a decision this size.

Staying at home is not the right answer in every house. If he needs somebody within reach at all hours, the options deserve comparing properly. When home care stops being enough is written for that point, elderly care living options covers the range, and live-in care sits between the two, with one carer living in the house rather than visiting it.

Company is a separate question from care, and it lasts far longer than this fortnight. Company after a bereavement is about the year ahead for the person left behind, and what a regular weekly visit does about it.

1. 1

   Ring adult social care at his council and ask for a needs assessment

   Free, and not means-tested

   Section 9 of the Care Act 2014 says that where it appears to a council that an adult may have needs for care and support, it must assess whether he does and what they are, regardless of the council's view of the level of his needs or his financial resources.
2. 2

   Say that the person who provided all of his care has died

   The words that matter

   Describe a bad day rather than a good one: he cannot get out of the bath alone, he has not cooked a meal in nine years, his wife handed him eleven tablets a day.
3. 3

   Ask what they can put in while you wait

   If it is urgent

   Section 19(3) of the Care Act 2014 lets a council meet needs that appear to it to be urgent without having yet carried out a needs or financial assessment.
4. 4

   Ask for a direct payment if you want to choose the carer

   At the assessment

   Where the council funds some of the care, it can pay the money to your father instead of arranging the care, and he spends it on a carer he picks.

Two things are worth knowing first. His savings make no difference to whether he gets an assessment, because money is dealt with afterwards in a separate financial one. And what the assessor writes down becomes the record of what he needs, so have the fortnight list with you and somebody in the room who has seen him on a bad day. The care needs assessment explains the day itself and how to arrange home care covers the order to do things in. Local authority funding covers what follows if he is eligible, and direct payments explains how council money can be spent on a carer he chooses.

The savings limits are the ones the NHS sets out on when the council might pay for your care. Claim in the right order, because several of these use each other as a test: Attendance Allowance and Pension Credit first, since a council tax disregard needs a qualifying benefit in place. Council tax, VAT relief, Pension Credit and grants works through each one, Attendance Allowance covers how to describe a bad day on the form, and Age UK has a free benefits calculator.

How to privately fund care covers paying for the first few weeks, while the assessments run, without selling anything.

Whether to tell him at all depends on where he is. Alzheimer's Society guidance on supporting a person with dementia during a bereavement sets out the considerations, including that a person not told loses the chance to grieve, and that telling somebody who cannot retain it means hearing it as news each time. Agree one approach as a family and tell any carer who starts.

This is also where visits scattered through the day are least likely to be enough, because the gaps between them are where he is alone with a question nobody answers. Live-in care for dementia covers one carer in the house day and night, and when live-in care becomes cheaper than hourly visits works out where the two cross over. The rest is in the dementia care guide, including making the home dementia-friendly and when someone with dementia refuses care.