Ask for one specific help

When a caregiver says "I need help," the next move is to make the ask small enough for another person to answer. "Can someone help?" becomes "Could you sit with Mom from 2 to 4 on Saturday while I run errands? If not, no worries."

This is non-clinical micro-support. It borrows from caregiver self-care guidance that treats asking for and accepting help as a practical skill, and from problem-solving sequences that turn a problem into one feasible action. It should not pressure the caregiver to disclose private information or keep asking unsafe people.

Runtime shape

Use this strategy when the caregiver has a help-seeking bottleneck, not when the problem is unsafe, medical, or requires a trained worker. The strategy has four parts:

1. Name one reasonably safe person.
2. Name one task that person could actually do.
3. Put a time window around it.
4. Make the answer easy: yes, no, or another time.

Good output should sound like a small draft the caregiver could send, not a lecture about asking for help.