Care notebooks

What is a Care Notebook?

The Care Notebook has multiple uses. A major role of this notebook is to help parents/caregivers maintain an ongoing record of their child's care, services, providers, and notes. This notebook is a great tool in empowering families to become the experts on their child's care. It is also a way to maintain the lines of communication between the many providers and services that help care for a child and their family.
Health professionals recommend that parents/ caregivers bring this notebook to all medical appointments, therapies, care conferences, on vacations, etc. Health professionals can encourage the use of these notebook by either having them available at the first office visit, upon discharge from the hospital or in the waiting room on a resource table. This notebook should be a team responsibility. Office staff should offer families assistance in filling out the various forms. Medical offices can copy visits, check ups, immunization records, specialist reports, clinical pathways, and give them to families to insert into the notebook.

Why build your own Care Notebook?

The Care Notebook is an organizing tool for families and will help you keep track of important information. Care Notebooks are very personal to your child and ideally should be customized to reflect your child's medical history and current information. For this reason, this web site has been developed to allow you to build a Care Notebook that best meets the need of your child.

Find out more about how to use the Care Notebook web site to create your own personal care notebook by taking the Care Notebook Online Tour.

How do I build my own Care Notebook?

Twenty Care Notebooks have been divided into sections with similar content and made available in both Microsoft Word and PDF formats. Your computer must have Microsoft Word software to open and use the Word documents or to delete, modify, or add your own text to reflect the information you want to include in that particular section of your Child's Care Notebook. You will need the free Adobe Reader on your computer to open and view the PDF documents. You can fill-in and print completed PDF forms from the web site or print blank forms and complete them manually. You cannot save completed PDF forms unless you purchase and have Adobe Acrobat software on your computer. Most people will want to fill-in and save the Care Notebook documents and this is most easily done with the word documents. However, those who do not have Word software on their computer are able to use the PDF format version with the understanding that the forms cannot be altered (or changed). It is recommended to view the online examples before building your own care notebook.

• Build your own Care Notebook
  Click here to download Care Notebooks forms.

You can find more info and examples here.