How I Used AI in Caregiving · The AI Advantage

How I Used AI in Caregiving

How I Used AI in Caregiving (and how you could too)

If you’re carrying the invisible weight of care, I want to share something that genuinely changed my life.

I’m UK-based. AI became my cognitive support system while I was fighting to get my 88-year-old dad out of a “temporary” care home and safely back home — home-first, least-restrictive, with the right support. It didn’t “solve” the system, but it helped me keep my footing, stay organised, and stay sane.

Goose (my AI) on comms, Mav (me) on the stick: I had zero prior experience when this began. During the hospital discharge phase Dad was hospitalised for around 10 weeks with delirium, and I was operating in pure distressed mode — often using AI after the event just to catch up and stop narrative drift. Later, once I could breathe again, I used AI to do what I call a “legislation linter” — a line-by-line, forensic breakdown of the Care Act / Mental Capacity Act principles relevant to our situation — and turned that into challenges, checklists, document requests, meeting agendas, and questions that forced written answers. That shift (from fog to facts) is what eventually let me challenge what felt like systemic manipulation of process and keep the Local Authority accountable.

It took about a year from hospital discharge into “temporary” placement to Dad being home with live-in care. Important nuance: throughout that period the LA continued funding the placement, with Dad contributing because he was below the savings threshold — so it wasn’t “no care,” it was wrong setting + hard to unwind.

A few specific ways I used AI in the trenches:

• Timeline + decision tracking: turning chaotic calls/emails into a clean chronology so I could spot gaps, contradictions, and missed steps.

• Plain-English translation: decoding care jargon into “what this means for Dad today” and “what I need in writing.”

• Drafting under pressure: letters, complaints, meeting notes, structured questions — fast, calm, usable.

• Evidence packing: a running document-gap list and bundles others could actually follow.

• Care planning & risk mitigation: converting “risk narratives” into practical home safeguards and routines.

• Emotional regulation: when overloaded, breaking the next step into something doable.

• Record control: short “confirm/correct within 48 hours” follow-ups so “we never said that” didn’t become the story.

One caregiver-truth detail: before live-in commissioned care, I ran an hourly domiciliary DP (Direct Payment, where I managed the money and delivery) package (~20 hours/week) from March 2023 to May 2024, recruiting and managing self-employed carers. It taught me a lot — but it was heavy. After Dad’s delirium hospitalisation, the fragility of that model under pressure became obvious. After two false starts, the LA commissioned Agincare (live-in), and Dad has now been home 5+ months — and honestly, that commissioned route gave me my life back because delivery accountability sits with the provider/commissioner rather than the family carrying the whole operational load.

I’m writing a book from this experience — Home First Care: A Son’s Fight to Bring His Father Home and Repair a Broken System — mainly because I wish I’d had something like it when I started.

If you’re in a similar trench, I’d be interested to hear what part of caregiving creates the biggest cognitive load for you — the admin, the uncertainty, the meetings, or the emotional weight?

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