You have to pick a home, and you have never done this before

Once an assessment approves residential care, you have to choose an actual home — and the process has two features nobody warns you about, both of which reward knowing them in advance. The first: you can be on more than one home's waitlist at the same time, and most families do not realise it.

The one question that reveals whether a home can handle decline, how the costs are actually structured, and the extras in the Resident Agreement that surprise people on the first invoice.