How we write
How this desk is written, and who pays for what
A reader who is juggling a job, two teenagers and a mother deserves to know exactly what she is reading. Here is the method, the money and the limits, in plain words.
Who publishes it
Between Mom and Kids is published by OwnersFirm, a St. Louis company that builds and runs small reference sites. The pages carry a desk byline rather than a person's name. Nobody on the desk is a doctor, nurse, therapist or lawyer, and the site does not pretend otherwise. That is why every page that comes near a health question hands it back to the care team or her doctor.
The method
The desk writes for one reader: a woman in the west St. Louis County suburbs raising teenagers while her mother, a town or two away, starts needing rides, meals and company in the afternoons. Each article is written to one question that reader actually types, and each one comes back to the same tool, the split week, two rows of five days with the collisions marked.
- Facts are linked where they are made. A number or a program rule links, in that sentence, to a federal or Missouri government page, a school district's own page, or a major nonprofit. The sources page lists each one with the date it was opened.
- Numbers stay in the source's words. We quote the figure and the year the source gives, and we keep its label. A published figure about spouses is not presented as a figure about parents.
- Phone numbers are read, not remembered. A number appears only after it was seen on the official page, and the date is printed next to it on local help.
- Leave from work is kept to what the Department of Labor publishes. Where the federal fact sheets are silent, so is this desk, and your employer's own policy is the next place to ask.
- School calendars are linked, never copied, because districts change dates and a stale copy is worse than none.
- Example weeks are labelled as examples. The grids on this site show the shape of a week. They are not data about any real family, school or program.
The one paid placement
One company appears on this site because it pays to: New Plan Care Solutions, a non-medical in-home care company independently owned and operated in St. Louis by Stacie Postol. It is a client of OwnersFirm, the publisher. The two are not commonly owned. Its box is labelled as paid on the front page and in a short note after each article. It is never ranked, scored or presented as the result of anything on this site, and no article was written to fit around it.
The form on the front page sends what you type to New Plan Care Solutions and nowhere else. It asks for a name and an email, a phone number only if you want a call or a text, and how you would like to be reached. Please leave diagnoses and medicines out of it.
What this desk will not do
- Diagnose, interpret symptoms, or give medication advice. Questions about medicines go to her doctor or pharmacist.
- Print a price it cannot source, including the paid placement's. We have found no public file of what non-medical in-home care costs in this metro, so the desk prints none.
- Rank companies, publish reviews or stars, or compare the paid placement with anyone.
- Invent a family, a quote or a success story to make a point.
- Tell you that you qualify for a program. Eligibility belongs to the agency that runs it.
- Carry tracking pixels or outside analytics scripts.
Corrections
If a link dies, a number changes, or a sentence says more than its source does, the sentence gets rewritten or removed, and the date on the sources page changes with it. Official pages win every disagreement with this site. To flag something, use the front page form and start the message with the word correction, or call or text (314) 405-0887 and ask for the note to be passed to the publisher. That number reaches the paid placement, which is the only contact route this desk publishes.
More about why the desk exists is on about. The suggested reading order is on start here.