Someone in another city wants to see your parent. The wish is sincere, and it usually arrives on a day when you have no hands free. A video call in the house can work well, but only if the setup is treated as a small installation with a start, a test, and a person who answers when it fails.
Local option: New Plan Care gives families in the St. Louis area in-home help so a parent can stay home: companionship, help with bathing and dressing, meals, and overnight care. Call (314) 405-0887.
Choose the spot before the device
Stand where the call will happen and look at what the camera will see: the bed, the window behind it, the lamp, the door. Your parent may be lying down or propped up, so the camera has to frame the face at that height, not the ceiling. Check whether the spot has a steady connection. Thick walls, a metal cabinet, or a room at the back of the house can each drop a signal that looked fine in the kitchen.
Set it up in the order it will be used
Charge the device first. Install the program the family already uses, sign in on the device, and make one test call to a second phone while you stand in the room. Ask the far-away person to call back on their own connection and tell you exactly what they see and hear. Do not assume the sound works because the picture does. Check the volume from the pillow, not from the doorway. Set the device so it does not sleep in the middle of a call, and turn off the notifications that would ring across the room at the wrong moment.
Name who owns it
A device nobody owns will be dead on the day someone needs it. Write down who charges it, who restarts it when the picture freezes, and who holds the login. Keep the login somewhere a second adult can find it. Tell the family the usual call times, so calls do not arrive during a bath, a visit from the hospice team, or a meal your parent is trying to finish.
Plan for the failure
The call will fail sometimes. Decide ahead of time what happens then: a plain phone call, a text with the time of the next attempt, or a note in the family thread. Tell the relatives what to do if they cannot connect, so they do not keep dialing while you are trying to get a glass of water to your parent. If your parent cannot take part on a given day, that is a decision for the family to make kindly and quickly, and nobody on the screen needs a full explanation.
For the wider plan around the house, the local help page lists the kinds of resources west St. Louis County families use.