What anybody looking after your children should know

Need to know is the standing facts about your children: what they are allergic to, what they take, the products that have to be used, and who to call. Not what happens today, but what is true every day.

It is written for somebody who has never opened Coparia before and has your children for the evening.

Add something

1. Open Need to know.
2. Select Add something.
3. Choose what kind of thing it is, say how serious it is, and write what to do about it.

The kinds are Allergy, Intolerance, Condition, Medication, Product, Habit, Contact and Other. A contact is how a doctor’s number belongs here rather than in somebody’s phone.

An entry can also carry a link, under Where to get it, for the thing somebody has to buy or find: the exact detergent, the brand of formula. It opens away from Coparia, and it is a link somebody in your family typed rather than one Coparia vouches for.

Leave the children unselected for something true of the whole house. “Hypoallergenic detergent only” is not about one child, and naming one would suggest the other’s washing does not matter.

Say what to do, not just what is wrong

An entry marked Danger must say what to do about it, or be marked as a call for an ambulance. Coparia will not save one that does neither.

“Allergic to peanuts” tells a frightened person nothing they can act on. “EpiPen in the front pocket of her bag, then call for help” is the same fact written for the ten seconds that matter.

The levels are Mild, Moderate and Danger, and the card is ordered by them, so the dangerous things are read first whether or not anybody scrolls.

It is never private

There is no setting to hide this from helpers, and that is deliberate rather than missing.

A sitter who cannot see “allergic to peanuts” is a safety problem, not a privacy preference. Every member of the family reads the same card.

Reading it never stops working

The card is free, on every plan. Writing to it and reading it are both included wherever you are.

A family whose plan lapses keeps the card exactly as it was. A child with a peanut allergy still has one, and a sitter still arrives at six, so a card that emptied itself over a payment would be the wrong answer to the wrong question.

See also set up a routine and check it off, for the things that repeat rather than the things that are simply true.