How a family rota helped us never leave Mum alone

Mum lives in a flat in Wood Green. She's 79, recently widowed, and adores her own company — until about Wednesday afternoon, when the silence starts to get to her.

We tried for ages to "just check in more". It worked for a fortnight and then drifted. The thing that finally stuck was a deeply boring, simple rota. Here is what it looks like.

The rota

• Mondays: my brother pops in after work, around six, brings dinner.
• Wednesdays: her friend Doreen from the bridge club comes for tea.
• Saturday mornings: me. We do the shopping, sometimes a walk in the park.
• Sunday evenings: we ring her on a video call, the whole family at once.

That's it. Four touchpoints. Two from family, one from a friend, one phone. No day in the week without contact.

Why it works

It works because:

• It's predictable. Mum knows what's happening. She doesn't sit by the phone wondering.
• It includes a non-family person. Doreen sees Mum every week and notices things faster than we would.
• The gaps are small. No more than two days without someone seeing her in person.
• We don't argue. Days are agreed. Swaps happen in the chat. Nobody is keeping score.

The check-in piece

The rota only covers visits. There are four other days. So we use Getwello, the app we built, for a one-tap morning check-in. Mum opens it, taps "I'm well", we get a notification. If she doesn't, we get told. We can ring her then, instead of every day.

The combination is what makes it calm. Visits give her actual company. The check-in gives the rest of us peace of mind on the in-between days.

How to build a rota that sticks

If you're putting a rota together for the first time:

1. Pick the maximum gap you're comfortable with. For us it's two days. For others it might be one.
2. Look at the week as a whole, not as individual slots. Which days does your loved one go quiet? Cover those first.
3. Include at least one non-family person if you can. Friend, neighbour, helper, anyone.
4. Have a default day per person. Not a contract — just "Tuesdays are usually mine".
5. Allow swaps without drama. The point is the coverage, not the rota.

What we'd do differently if starting today

Set the rota up with a calendar from day one. We did it from a notes app for the first month and lost track of swaps within a week. Have it somewhere everyone in the family can see, and where you can see two weeks ahead.

Other than that, just start. The thing about rotas is that ours wasn't very good at the beginning. The point was to have one. The polish came later.

If you'd like to try Getwello for the calendar-and-check-in part, that's exactly what it does.