What families are doing with CareGoals

"I've known what I want for years. I just didn't have a way to say it that my children would actually hear."

Dorothy Warkentine had lived in the same house in Boulder for 41 years. She'd watched her husband spend his final months in a skilled nursing facility he hated, and she'd made a private decision long ago that she wouldn't do the same. But her three adult children — scattered across Colorado and California — had very different assumptions about what their mother would want.

Her daughter Margaret set up a CareGoals session on a Sunday afternoon. Dorothy was skeptical — "I'm not answering questions from a computer about my death." But Sage didn't start there. It asked about her mornings. What made a day feel worth it. What she wanted people to remember. An hour later, Dorothy had said more about her wishes than she had in the previous decade of family conversations. The Care Summary became the document her family finally agreed on.

"We weren't fighting about Dad. We were each projecting what we wanted — and we didn't realize it until Sage asked him directly."

When their father Frank was diagnosed with early-stage Parkinson's at 74, the three Morales brothers agreed on very little. The eldest, Carlos, wanted aggressive treatment and kept researching clinical trials. The middle son, David, thought Frank should move closer to family in Denver. The youngest, Miguel, believed their father would want to stay in his own house — and resented his brothers for pushing.

At a family meeting, Miguel suggested they let Frank complete a CareGoals session with Sage alone — without the sons present. Frank agreed. What came back surprised all three of them. Frank didn't want to move. He didn't want aggressive intervention if his cognition declined significantly. He wanted to stay home as long as possible with support. And he wanted Miguel — the youngest — as his healthcare proxy, because "Miguel doesn't panic." The document gave the brothers something to agree on that wasn't any of their opinions. It was their father's.

"We didn't do it because we were scared. We did it because we realized we'd been meaning to for ten years and we just never had."

Patricia and James Henley were both 61, both healthy, both retired teachers. A friend's sudden cancer diagnosis made them realize they'd been putting off a conversation they'd always assumed they'd get to eventually. They sat down one Saturday morning with coffee and opened CareGoals together — two separate sessions, side by side at the kitchen table.

What they discovered surprised them. Patricia had strong feelings about not wanting life support under any circumstances — feelings James hadn't fully understood. James wanted to remain home under almost any conditions; Patricia had assumed he'd be open to a care facility if needed. The CareGoals process didn't just produce documents — it opened a conversation they'd been circling for years. They shared both summaries with their two adult children at Thanksgiving. Their daughter called it "the best gift you've ever given us."

"The families who fight the most are the ones where nobody knows what the person actually wants. CareGoals changes that before I even walk in the door."

Rosa Ibarra has worked as a home caregiver for eleven years, most recently with co-op.care families in Boulder. In her experience, the hardest situations weren't about medical complexity — they were about families who disagreed, children who hadn't talked to each other, and clients who had clear preferences but no way to make those preferences heard by the people caring for them.

Rosa started asking new families to complete a CareGoals session before her first week. The Care Summary became her orientation document — she knew before she arrived what mattered to the person she was caring for: their daily routines, their privacy preferences, what kind of conversation they liked over meals, what they never wanted to talk about. "I'm not guessing anymore," she says. "And the families aren't guessing either. When there's a hard day, we all know what the person would want."