Q: My father died six years ago. My mother had a serious stroke last month, and the doctor says she will need to go to a nursing home because she needs full-time care. There are several nursing homes in my mom’s area, but I have no idea how to separate the good ones from the bad. Can you help?

A: I sympathize with your problem. My own family recently learned that my nonsmoking father is dying from cancer, and trying to find a good nursing home for him took a lot of work.

Start your hunt for the best facility by contacting the federally operated Eldercare Locator (800-677-1116, or www.eldercare.gov on the Internet). The organization has lots of useful information and will refer you to the nearest Agency on Aging, which can provide you with a list of nursing homes in your mom’s area.

The agency should be able to give you contact information for your local ombudsman, a government official who’s paid to check out nursing facilities, investigate complaints and fight for the rights of nursing-home residents and family members like you.

Make unannounced visits to as many homes as you can. Many experts say the best times to visit are midmorning (to make sure the home’s staff already has helped everyone out of bed) and at suppertime (to ensure that most residents are eating in the dining area instead of “isolating” in their own rooms).

Use the visits to strike up casual conversations with the nurses, making sure to ask how many residents they take care of – the lower the number, the better.

Once you’ve narrowed your search to three or four facilities, talk to each home’s top administrator and nursing director.

Good nursing-home care begins at the top, so you want to make sure both of the professionals are compassionate and good communicators. It’s a good sign if they’ve been working in the same position for at least a few years, because a high turnover rate in such key positions can create instability that lowers a facility’s overall standard of care.

Also ask the administrator for a copy of the state’s inspection survey, commonly known in most parts of the country as Form 2567. Federal law requires that nursing homes make the reports readily available, so it’s a bad sign if you face long delays in obtaining a copy or can’t get one at all.

A lengthy Form 2567 that cites lots of previous violations is certainly cause for concern.

But even a short report that includes only minor infractions is no guarantee that your loved one will get high-quality care, since some inspectors aren’t as thorough about looking for problems as others.

Also check the Nursing Home Quality Monitor, developed by the experts at Consumer Reports magazine (www.consumerreports.org). The monitor lists specific nursing homes in each of the 50 states that should be considered based on various measures of quality care, as well as a list of facilities that should be avoided based on the same set of judging criteria.

Q: We are trying to purchase our first home, but we’re confused by all the terminology that sellers use in their ads – not to mention the jargon that real estate agents, bankers and everyone else who works in the industry uses. Can you recommend a good book or Web site that explains some of these terms?

A: I sympathize with your plight. The home-buying process is confusing enough, and is only made worse for first-time buyers with all the abbreviations and terms that sellers and industry professionals use but never bother to explain.

The problem is further exacerbated by the fact that most dictionary-publishing companies haven’t kept up with the housing market’s fast-growing jargon: Webster’s itself adds only about 100 words a year to its entire lexicon, and most of them don’t have anything to do with real estate.

Fortunately, most major bookstores offer basic real estate glossaries that can provide many of the definitions you need.

Also, be sure to check out the free Web site www.consumerreports.org, which lists more than 2,000 real estate terms.