An Online Letter of Intent

Every parent worries about whether their children will be well cared for if tragedy strikes, but the worries are compounded for parents of children with special needs who may not have the capacity to communicate their needs with their caregivers.

As a parent, you know your child better than anyone else. You know their habits, friends, the names of their caregivers and physicians, their favorite foods, their medical needs, and educational requirement.

But what would happen in the event of your incapacity or death? Will the person you’ve entrusted to care for your child have the requisite knowledge to assume that responsibility with minimal disruption to your child’s life?

A Letter of Intent

A letter of intent is a planning tool for parents to share information with caregivers that is essential to their child’s care. It should include information such as names, addresses and phone numbers of family members, facts relating to your child’s medical conditions and the names addresses and phone numbers of those actively involved in your child’s care. To find out more about what should be included in your letter of intent, click on the link.

An Online Letter of Intent

Now there is also an online tool that parents can use to share this information with caregivers. Vest is a cloud-based tool for parents of children with special needs to organize and share important information about their child with family members, teachers, babysitters and anyone else who is involved in their child’s care.

Vest allows you to create a “Vest” for your child with special needs. Within each Vest, you can add information pertaining to a host of categories, including:

• Family
• Caregivers and Key People
• Emergency and Safety
• Day to Day
• Diet and Meal Plan
• Strengths and Abilities
• Health Care
• Diagnosis and Reports
• Behavior
• Education
• Religious and Spiritual
• Social/Recreational Activities

Once you’ve added the information, you have the ability to share some or all this information with family members, friends, teachers, and other caregivers, which they will in turn be able to access on a desktop or mobile phone. You can also revoke a caregiver’s access to certain bits of information at any time.

Click on the link for more information about Vest.