Home Assessment Surveys

 Print this page

Why Perform Home Assessments?

Checklists for aging in place are fairly easy to come by. As the staff at Dynamic Living researched what the 'experts' recommend, we realized that most of the checklists were really lists of solutions. If these are the solutions, then what are the problems? That's where we decided to start, with a list of probing questions that will help you identify problem areas so that you can plan your new home or your remodel to be a more effective solution for your specific needs and budget.

AdaptMy.com's Home Assessment Surveys are designed to collect information about the people who live in the home and how they get things done. The idea is to be proactive rather than waiting to react when life throws you a curveball, like a fall, a sudden illness or the need for a mobility device.

Once the survey is completed, home improvement and design modifications are considered to remedy issues, make things easier, or simply keep the future in mind while updating a room.

Templates for Home Assessments

Our templates are available in two formats: PDF & Word. Clicking on the links below will open the assessment file in a new window. Once the file is open you can save it to your computer's hard drive.

How to Use AdaptMy.com's Home Assessment Surveys

The questions in these assessments are intended to begin a conversation. They are designed to probe for more information, rather than fill up a sheet with "Yes" and "No" answers. At this initial stage, we're not looking for solutions. Right now we're looking for what's working and not working for a family as they go about their current daily tasks, and thinking about what those tasks might look like in the future.

Part of the survey includes observing body language: look for shyness, fear, embarrassment and other tips that you may be close to a problem area. This is because the answers being given might not be highlighting all the issues.

The lists contain more than 100 questions and the interview process will probably raise more questions. Don't be overwhelmed! When questions on the list are irrelevant, they do not need an answer. Where there are answers, however, there are clues. These clues give you a better understanding of underlying issues and priorities, which gives you more insight to what changes will give you the most value. The whole family needs to participate, including any caregivers that are not part of the immediate family, to give the best possible picture of what opportunities might be helpful to tackle now (short range planning) and what may be needed in just a few years (long range planning).

Another way to go at this exercise might be to have each family member go through a common task while someone else observes. For example, show how you boil an egg, bathe or get ready to go out. These simple tasks cover many of the questions and quickly show potential problems.

For each potential change that is revealed there may be several solutions; some easy, some hard and some compromises. Solutions should be weighed based upon the specific needs, tastes and budget of the family.