I've had the same problem with ARC not passing through reliably from Panasonic OLED to Yamaha receiver, so I've given up with it. I hook the TV to the receiver via optical and its much more reliable. You didn't list your equipment and whether it's 4K, Dolby Vision, HDR10+ capable etc. For me, there is no receiver currently available with HDR10+ passthrough, so I have to hook up anything with HDR10+ (such as UHD Blu-Ray player, Amazon 4K FireStick etc) directly to the TV and get audio return via optical. That seems to work well, except that I don't hear Dolby True HD or DTS Master as the optical return (and ARC) support Dolby 5.1 max (unless of course, you have a 2019 Sony TV with EARC). If your Blu-Ray player has a 2nd HDMI out for audio, then you can connect that to the receiver to get the hi-res surround formats, but I've found that to be somewhat problematic with my Yamaha AVR too. If your HDMI CEC is working well between your various devices, just throw away the sound bar. With HDMI CEC working, turning on your TV will turn on the receiver and the audio will route through to the correct input. Hence your family members don't need to know anything about AVR. Even changing volume on TV remote will change the AVR volume.
If you have no 4K or only Dolby Vision and have a DV capable AVR, then you should be able to connect everything to the AVR.