Editorial Guidelines

Overview of guidelines

At A Place for Mom, we’re committed to ensuring the integrity of our content through the following editorial principles, practices, and standards.

Our mission

Empower caregivers to make the best decisions by providing helpful senior living and home care information.

Key principles

We focus on creating content that:

• Supports seniors and caregivers. Our content provides helpful information for caregivers and seniors on a wide range of topics including caregiving, senior health and wellness, senior care options, community information, financial and legal planning, locations’ senior-friendliness, veterans benefits, and more. No matter your caregiving or senior living needs, we have information to serve and support you.
• Is accurate and accessible. We rely on high-quality sources, fact-checking processes, and expert reviews to ensure that the content we create is both well sourced and easy to understand.
• Earns your trust. We know that transparency is important to you. In order to secure your confidence, we adhere to strict editorial standards that help us ensure that you remain at the center of all our decisions.

Editorial practices and standards

Our editorial practices and standards determine how we source, write, and edit our content. We require:

• Expert interviews and high-quality sources. Our writers use authoritative, primary sources to inform their content. We seek interviews with top experts and cite research from leading government, educational, industry, and research institutions. When citing journal publications, we lean on trusted, peer-reviewed studies.
• Fact-checking. All content undergoes a rigorous fact-checking process that includes writers and editors to ensure that the information we publish is current as of the publication date.
• Expert panel. Our expert panel closely collaborates with A Place for Mom’s editorial team across articles, videos, and more, bringing their decades of rich professional experience to add additional context and depth to our content.
• Article reviews. Both A Place for Mom and external experts in their field review our articles before publication to verify accuracy and ensure they align with the latest industry trends and information.
• Use of proprietary data. With reliable community data based on over 200 data points on approximately 14,000 senior living communities, nearly 400,000 reviews from residents and their families, and independent reporting, we strive to ensure our data serves you. We use our data to better refer and inform seniors and families, and more effectively score and rank communities, cities, and states. We never manipulate data, nor do we enter into paid marketing partnerships with our in-network communities.
• Timely corrections and content updates. If we discover or are informed of a factual error, we post a correction. We review all content on a regular basis and schedule content updates to ensure that our content remains accurate over time. If you believe you have identified an error in our content, please email us at content@aplaceformom.com. The editorial team will consider your feedback and update as necessary.

Editorial independence

Our editorial team is solely responsible for the production of all editorial content, including but not limited to articles, community information, downloads, guides, location-based content, product roundups, and reports.

In order to maintain full authority over the editorial content, we insist on:

• No influence from our community partners. A Place for Mom’s community partners have no influence over editorial decisions, and our editorial team does not recommend communities based on business relationships.
• No influence from business partners. A Place for Mom’s business partners have no influence over editorial decisions or the editorial lineup. Product reviews are not based on business relationships and do not generate revenue. Occasionally, when a product or service is relevant to an article topic, we may mention A Place for Mom business partners in editorial content. Partner ads are set apart from content, and we clearly disclose any and all financial relationships.
• No compensation in exchange for content. We do not accept compensation of any kind in exchange for clicks or mentions in article content.

Our subject matter

A Place for Mom’s content covers a wide variety of topics pertaining to seniors and caregiving. Our content is designed to address the full spectrum of the aging experience for both seniors and their families.

• Senior care and home care. With robust data on over 14,000 senior living communities, A Place for Mom brings unique insights to common questions seniors and caregivers have about all things senior living, from independent living to assisted living, and even nursing homes.
• Caregiver support. Caring for a senior loved one can present challenges for caregivers. Our content seeks to provide information to empower caregivers, helping them understand the situations they face in caring for a senior and the options they have for support.
• Location-based insights. With nearly 400,000 reviews from residents of senior living communities and their families, A Place for Mom compiles our data to give seniors and caregivers the best information about senior care in a given city or state. We evaluate the senior-friendliness, regulations, and more to give you the information you need to assess whether a location will fit you or your senior loved one.
• Health and wellness. Seniors face unique health challenges, and A Place for Mom wants to empower them – and their caregivers – to live life to the fullest! Our health and wellness content is reviewed by health care experts to ensure it reflects current medical knowledge and best practices.
• Products. We seek to highlight products that make sense and make life easier for seniors and their families. These product roundups do not generate any revenue for A Place for Mom, nor are they based on any business relationships. We seek first and foremost to put together product information that helps caregivers and seniors alike.

How we source interviews from communities and families

A Place for Mom helps caregivers make the best care decisions for senior loved ones. The service is free for families. Here’s how it works.

The editorial team occasionally utilizes A Place for Mom’s network of partner communities and families that have used our service in order to source:

• Interviews with senior living experts. Our partner communities are a rich source of senior care experts and staff who can provide you with inside information about how senior care agencies and communities operate. We clearly identify when sources are affiliated with a community, and communities do not influence or review editorial content.
• Interviews with caregivers or seniors. We use family interviews to provide you with real, firsthand accounts from people who have walked in your shoes. To protect the privacy of the families who share personal information with us, we only publish the source’s first name and city/state location.

How we decide what products and services to feature

Product roundups — content that lists multiple products or services, like best cell phones for seniors or best GPS trackers for seniors — are not based on business relationships and do not generate revenue for A Place for Mom. Product roundups are purely editorial and research-based. All thoughts and opinions are our own.

We occasionally mention A Place for Mom business partners in editorial content. Our criteria for featuring partner products or services include:

• Relevance to you. The product or service must be relevant to the article topic and potentially helpful for you or your family member.
• Disclosure of financial relationships. We will clearly disclose any financial relationships at the point of mention.

See also

We strive to provide you with clarity and transparency about our business practices and use of data. Follow the links below for additional, more specific information.

Understand our data methodology
We use data to help families make better senior living and care decisions.

Contact our team

We want to hear from you and welcome your feedback or questions. To connect with the editorial team, email content@aplaceformom.com.