Home adaptations for the elderly: ramps, grab rails and safer bathrooms, so a parent can stay in their own house

A first step

With the family's agreement, visit 5 homes where an elderly parent lives alone and note the risks: steps, a slippery bathroom, nothing to hold. Fit grab rails and a ramp in one house with a local builder and photograph it before and after. Then show the photographs in 2 groups for Sri Lankans abroad and offer a home check at a fixed fee. Families who book the check and then the work are the proof.

Who pays first

A Sri Lankan abroad who worries about a parent falling at home, and would pay to make the house safe rather than move the parent out.

What leaves today

Parents leave their own homes for care, or for their children's countries, when a few rails and a ramp would let them stay.

The idea and the mechanism are from the book. The first step was written for this site as a suggestion; if you know a better one, say so.

The test

Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?

The only test any idea on this site has to pass. The four rules that go with it are here.

In the book

• Ch. EightWhat It Costs to Go First
  Remittances and what it costs the first one to go
• Ch. SixteenThe Bridge
  The institutions already in existence that could carry value back

More from cluster 17

• 341Home-care agencies with trained, vetted carers, booked and paid from abroad
• 342Assisted-living homes for the parents of Sri Lankans abroad, with the standard published and inspected
• 343A daily check-in service: a nurse's visit, a photograph, a message to the child abroad
• 344Medical escort services: a nurse takes the parent to the appointment and reports back
• 345Pharmacy delivery with the prescription managed and the refills tracked
• 346Dementia day-care centres, which hardly exist yet and are needed everywhere

All 20 ideas in this cluster