Practical ways a far-away sibling can support elderly parent care

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Can anyone give examples, from experience, of how the far-away sibling can help with an elderly parent please? Practically?

i’m asking from the point of view of being the daughter living near my mum, with an overseas sister. And also for suggestions as to how DH can help with his mum, as we live other side of the country and his sister sorts everything, which I also think is unfair. If I give DH suggestions he usually acts on them, I’m not volunteering for any MIL support myself!

MIL has carers twice a day. My own mum is not yet at that stage, so I’m thinking ahead (just a bit fed up of the responsibility already!).

You don't need to take on any responsibility if you don't want to. If your mum wants help either you or your sister could suggest setting up lpa if you are happy to do that, set up direct debits, food deliveries.

I live next door to my elderly, infirm and visually impaired DM and my DB is 7 hours away but he gives me lots of support. He’s a safe person to rant to when I need it, makes me see reason at times but most importantly he has a way of making DM see sense when I need him to, which can be often! He also visits so that DH and I can go on holiday for a break. He definitely makes my life a bit easier despite being limited in practical terms due to distance.

Things my parents did for my grandparents at a distance:

• Oversaw bank accounts (paid bills, checked no scam-type spending, moved money in/out from savings as necessary)
• Phoned grandmother every morning at 7am to wake her up and at 7.15 to make sure she actually was awake and getting ready for her day-club pickup at 8am. Researched day-club/other activities in the first place and also things like a local lift service to take her there.
• Did all liaising/organising with cleaner, carers, gardener, handymen etc over the phone (very occasionally needed do a small task related to this sort of thing in person). Organised/paid newspaper delivery/milkman.
• Organised food delivery (ended up having to cancel this as it often got refused at the door)

Things that could not be done at a distance

• putting out bins/clearing out uneaten food from the fridge etc
• taking out for day trips/meals (etc)
• clothes shopping (they did the actual shopping in advance but everything had to be tried on to be accepted)
• facilitating personal hygiene (cutting toenails, taking to the hairdresser)
• assisting with emergency health issues
• putting medication into dosset boxes
• answering anxiety/loneliness phone calls requiring urgent attendance for spurious "household problems" (not being able to operate the TV etc)
• observing mental state in person
• talking to neighbours

Paying bills.
Researching medical issues or local support.
Researching tech & equipment
Purchasing online and getting things sent

Supporting on the ground sibling by not interfering and not second guessing their decisions and being appreciative.

If money is tight then helping financially.

Maybe harder if abroad. In which case using leave to come over to cover holidays for the present sibling so they get a break.

My relative supported their mother from the other side of the world by sorting online weekly food deliveries.

I'm a few hours away whilst sister is next door. I tend to do LPA 'stuff' so sorting council tax, bills, changing energy, DWP. It's stuff my sister hates doing so it works well.

Thank you all.

Food deliveries wouldn’t work for MIL as she wouldn’t open the door. But for DM my sister could do that if needed in the future. Save me having to search the supermarket for this week’s random item…. (I don’t do regular shopping for her at the moment but did in the lockdown era).

I have LPA for my mum (with sister too). I don’t reckon MIL would agree to it, she’s very secretive, but I’ll suggest that to DH anyway. If he did have LPA then handling her finances - at a future date - would be a very useful thing for him to do actually.

You've had some great suggestions on this thread! My additions:

• The Alexa Echo Show is very good for remote support. Friends showed us how they used it to help an elderly relative and now I use it for mine. It's an Alexa with a screen and camera. The most useful thing for us is, I can "drop in" from my phone to the screen. This means dad doesn't have to do anything to answer it; when I press "drop in" on my phone, it plays a notification sound to him, then I pop up on his screen and we can chat. It's really good at zooming in on him wherever he is. I can call him from out on a walk and show him the views. He can see them on a decent sized screen, while lying in his bed. Dad refuses to use a mobile phone but loves this. You can get screen sizes up to 15" and this can be wall mounted.

• Remote sibling can join local Facebook group for parent's area to help find tradesmen, local services etc. Can be a great way to find help.

Mum was relatively independent, as far as a 90+ person can be.

Very remote autocratic oldest sibling

• Phoned mum regularly for chats, sent photos etc
• swept in once a year or so with a fresh pair of eyes and pointed out things we couldn’t see from close up eg state of mum’s house (not always welcome but valuable and generally right)

Less remote (and slightly guilty about it) sibling

• Phoned mum regularly for chats, sent photos etc
• had my back, supported me, praised me, told me how grateful she was, listened with sympathy
• took over completely a few times a year for a few days at a time

DH is the remote sibling in his setup: he manages all finances, prescriptions, insurance, and all worries MIL has about these. I do computer/phone stuff and Nice Days Out (we both enjoy these although they are getting more difficult and if I have to have lunch at another garden centre I will scream).

This is a great post and has the elements I would have noted. My parents died in 2023 and 2025 and I am an only who lives over 200 miles away. It was brutal but being organised and keeping on top of everything really helped me. I may add that the far away sibling could build relationships with any 'support' network. I worked hard at this and so had people who could take Dad to play snooker for example. Good luck!

It really does depend on the various relationships and personalities involved. DH is the overseas child, SIL lives 10 minutes away from FIL.

DH

• has the difficult conversations and tells his dad when he is asking too much of SIL as she’s not good at boundaries.
• researches and helps find service providers / products that might help.
• he always tells SIL to only do what she is able to do and tries to reassure her that we don’t expect anything of her that she doesn’t want to give. She’s hard to convince though.
• his visits often seem to coincide with major health crises, and he has to take control as SIL find this very stressful. He does all the phoning around, goes to appointments, sets up services, gets stroppy when necessary.

SIL does the unrelenting donkey work of housework and food buying, visiting three times a week and listening to his moaning, taking him to rdvs, keeping in touch with drs and up to date with medical situations. I can’t say she enjoys it and we are always trying to get her to accept outside help even though he’s not a fan. We recently got her to increase the cleaner’s hours and to include ironing and shopping so that she didn’t have to do it. DH had to do the persuading and also just telling his dad this was going to happen, SIL made the actual arrangements and communicated with the cleaner.

From the far-away sibling side, the things that tend to actually help rather than just feel helpful:
Taking ownership of specific tasks completely rather than offering vague help. "I'll handle all the insurance renewals", or "I'll be the one who rings the GP when something needs chasing" — concrete, owned, not requiring the nearby person to delegate every time.
Phone calls. Regular, scheduled ones directly with the parent — not just with the sibling. The nearby person often ends up being the emotional relay for everyone, which is exhausting. If the far-away sibling has their own direct relationship with the parent, it takes some of that weight off.
Researching and arranging things remotely — care options, equipment, services — so the nearby person doesn't have to do the thinking as well as the doing.
And when they do visit, they actually do the things that have built up. Not a social visit. A working visit.
The hardest thing to communicate to a far-away sibling is that "being available if needed" is not the same as helping. The nearby person is already managing everything so smoothly that nothing looks like it needs help — that smoothness has a cost.

My brother, who lives several hours away, has handled all the financial complexity resultant from my fathers' death. And he comes to stay with my mother a few times a year.

However, having unheaved my own life, my then partner's and my daughter's to move closer to my parents, I inevitably pick up more of the day to day, and it DOES feel unfair sometimes. And especially unhelpful when he makes pronouncements about what should be happening here.

(To be fair, he has started to do this much less since dad passed - I think witnessing first hand the way mom and I cared for dad during his horrendously traumatic and sad end of life, showed me brother that we aren't complete idiots and he probably shouldn't speak to us as such!).

I was the further away sibling and helped by ringing my parents daily, so that my Dsis was not rung daily. We had lots of chats and I tried to give them something happy to speak about, so that my Dmum would not go into a darker 'loop' with my dad (she had alzheimers). This did help. x

I am the closer sibling and also have more time than Dsibling in termtime (teacher whereas I work 4 days in an office) but DSibling has very long holidays and so picks up more then (in theory, in practice they go away all the time).

Definitely take ownership of things, I am "the organised one" and find I always have to delegate, then pick up the pieces when it either doesn't get finished or is messed up. Much paperwork/admin can be done remotely. Actually do jobs when you do visit, not just "make a note for next time". Join local FB groups, know where things like B&Q are for when you visit. Remote access to DParents emails if they agree. Don't wait for the near sibling to ask you to do things, be pro-active, look at the house critically when you do visit, try and anticipate things that can happen. Follow threads on MN and think "oh yes, we ought to be doing/checking that too"