Parents Home Care

My mom isn't answering her phone. What do I do?

Call her again, then text, then call whoever is closest to her front door: a neighbor, the building manager, anyone with a key. If nobody has seen her within about an hour, call the non-emergency police line for her town and ask for a welfare check. It is free, and you do not have to be nearby to ask.

Call 911 instead, right now, if you have a specific reason to think she is hurt, or if she has memory problems and may have gone out.

Do this now, in this order

Note the time you started. Work outward from her phone to her front door. Stop as soon as someone has laid eyes on her.

  1. Call twice more, ten minutes apart, and send a text. Phones get left in coats, ringers get switched off, and hearing aids come out at night. If she has a landline and a cell, try both.
  2. Call the people nearest her home. A neighbor, a building manager or superintendent, a friend from church, whoever has her spare key. Ask them to knock, listen for the TV, and look for the car. Most unanswered calls end here.
  3. Check what you can see remotely. A smart speaker, a shared calendar, a doorbell camera. If a sibling or friend spoke to her today, ask what she was planning.
  4. Call the non-emergency police line for her town and ask for a welfare check. Say who you are, where she lives, when you last heard from her, what is unusual about the silence, and any health conditions. Officers will knock, look, and call you back.
  5. Call 911 if you have a specific reason to think she is hurt. A fall you heard on the line, a medical condition that could leave her unable to answer, or a neighbor who saw a light on all night. Tell the dispatcher she lives alone.

If she has memory problems and may have gone out, do not work down this list. Ask a neighbor whether her car, coat, and purse are gone. Search nearby for no more than 15 minutes, then call 911 and file a missing person report. Tell the dispatcher about the memory problems first (Alzheimer's Association). The search itself is covered in what to do when a parent gets lost.

If someone finds her on the floor, do not lift her. If a welfare check finds her down, the officers will call an ambulance. What comes next is in what to do after a fall.

What the police will ask you for

Have this ready before you call:

  • Her full name and address, including the apartment number.
  • Whether she lives alone, and whether there are pets.
  • Her health conditions, and any medicines that could leave her confused or unresponsive.
  • When you last spoke, and what she was like.
  • Your name, number, and relationship to her.

Call the department that covers her address, not your own. Search for "[her city] police non-emergency number." Be concrete. "I haven't heard from my mother in four days, she has diabetes, and she always calls me every morning" gives a dispatcher far more to work with than "I'm worried" (LegalClarity).

Non-emergency checks can take a while. If you learn something alarming while you wait, call back or call 911.

Not sure where she stands overall? The five-minute assessment asks about what you've actually seen, then shows its reasoning. Free, no sign-up.

So it doesn't happen again

Give her three people and one daily signal. Tonight's problem was not really the phone. It was that nobody near her knew whether today was a normal day.

  1. A roster of three. Three people who can be at her door within thirty minutes, who have each other's numbers, and who know they are on the list. A neighbor, a friend, a relative nearby. Family far away coordinates; the roster responds. If you are the one far away, caring from a distance is written for you.
  2. A key that is not with her. A spare with one of the three, or a lockbox with a code the roster knows. A welfare check without a key can mean a broken door.
  3. One daily check-in she agrees to. A call at the same time, a county telephone reassurance program, or a daily check-in service that notices when the morning is quiet and tells the roster. The options are compared in how to check on a parent every day. If you relied on a smart speaker subscription for this and lost it, see what replaced Alexa Together.
  4. A phone she keeps on her. The National Institute on Aging advises a charged phone with her at all times and daily contact with a family member or friend. A cordless handset in every room is cheaper than a pendant she will not wear.

In the US, the Eldercare Locator at 1-800-677-1116 connects you to her Area Agency on Aging, which often runs the daily-call programs, and 211 lists community services by phone. 211 Canada is available 24 hours a day in most of the country.

Does an unanswered phone mean she shouldn't live alone?

Not on its own. Not answering is a habit, a hearing problem, or a choice far more often than it is an emergency.

What tonight does tell you is that your family has no dependable way to check on her. That is a real gap, and it is one the family can close. If the scare raises the larger question, the assessment asks what you have actually seen over the past year, not only tonight.

The Parents Home Care assessment gives one of three results. Living alone looks workable right now means nothing you told us pointed to a problem today. Living alone can work with more support means one or more areas need attention, and the result names the kind of support each area calls for. It is time to look at more support than home alone can give means either one event the assessment treats as serious on its own, or difficulty in four or more areas at once, and the first step is a conversation with your parent's doctor. The result is never a number and never a guarantee. The rules behind it are published in full on the how the assessment decides page.

It does not ask for your email before the result, and the rules it uses are published on the how the assessment decides page.

Questions families ask

What exactly is a welfare check?

A visit by police or another public safety service to confirm that someone is all right, requested by a person who is worried about them. Officers knock, look, and call you back. The exact procedure varies by town.

Can I ask for one in another state or province?

Yes. You call the police non-emergency line for the town where she lives, not where you live, and distance does not matter to them. Have her address, your last contact, and her health conditions ready. The same approach works in Canada. If she might be in immediate danger, call 911 and give her city and address right away, so the call reaches the right dispatcher. Ask the officers to call you back either way.

What if she has fallen and can't get up?

That is the fear behind most of the worry, and it is worth naming. In one study of people over 90, 82 percent of falls happened when the person was alone, 80 percent of those who fell could not get up after at least one fall, and 30 percent lay on the floor for an hour or more at least once. In 80 percent of the falls where the person was alone and stuck, she did not press a call alarm she already had. A pendant on the dresser does nothing. The same study found that lying on the floor for a long time was "strongly associated with serious injuries, admission to hospital, and subsequent moves into long term care."

How do I know if my elderly mom is ok if she won't answer?

You cannot know from a distance, which is the whole problem. Someone has to see her or hear her. Work through the people near her home first, then the non-emergency police line for a welfare check. For next time, set up one daily signal she agrees to, and a roster of three people who can be at her door within thirty minutes.

What if she never answers the phone on purpose?

Then the phone is the wrong tool, and forcing it will not work. On the AgingCare forum, families solved this with a sibling phone tree so she hears from one person a day instead of five, a smart speaker she can talk to without picking anything up, and a neighbor who checks in each morning. Agree on one signal she is willing to give, and build everything else around that.

Who makes this guide, and why should I trust it?

Parents Home Care publishes this guide. It cites original sources readers can open, carries a visible update date, names its publisher and clinical reviewer, and publishes the assessment rules. Any optional paid service is explained before a related button.

Is tonight a one-off or a pattern?

Tonight was one event. If you're wondering about the pattern, the assessment is the place to think it through. It can say living alone looks workable right now, and it will show you why.

Start the free assessment

Published by Parents Home Care. Clinically reviewed by Sarah Fleischman, CCC-SLP on September 3, 2026. Updated September 3, 2026. Sources: 8 linked below.

Sources