The document
The Letter for the Caregiver.
The day-to-day letter: routines, communication, behavior, and health as it is actually lived. Written to be read in a kitchen at 7am by someone who has to get the morning right, not filed in a binder.
One of the two letters the form can write. This one is for whoever gives the day-to-day care.
The morning, written down before someone has to guess it.
Most of what keeps a day working was never written anywhere. It lives in the person who has always done it: the order things happen in, the sentence that gets a coat on, the food that goes back untouched if the plate is wrong. A caregiver arriving without it spends weeks rediscovering what you already know.
This letter is that knowledge, in the order someone needs it. It is not a care plan and not a medical document — it is one person telling the next person how to do this well.
Free, printable, and made entirely on your device. Nothing is uploaded, and we never see a word.
What it contains
- Routines, and the shape of a day
- How they communicate, and how to talk with them
- Behavior: what sets it off, what helps, and what to say to a first responder
- Health as it is lived — medications, allergies, the emergency plan
- What a good day looks like, and what a hard one needs
- Food, personal care, and the home
- School or work, and the people and places that matter
One form can write both. You answer the questions once. Each letter is then written for its own reader, so nobody is handed the other one’s pages — and you never type anything twice.
Read by whoever has the day.
Whoever arrives on Monday
A new aide, on their first morning, alone. They have a job description and a key. What they do not have is the order the morning has to happen in, or the fact that asking a question before the bus feed is checked will cost them the next hour.
The respite worker, for one weekend
Two days is not long enough to learn any of it. Which foods are refused, what a hard hour looks like before it arrives, what calms it, and what makes it worse. Written down, a stranger gets a good weekend instead of a survivable one.
A sibling covering while you are away
They grew up in the house and still do not know the routine. Knowing someone is not the same as running their day. The letter says the parts that were always just done, by you, without anyone writing them down.
The group home or day program
Handed over at intake, then kept in the file. Staff turn over. The letter is what survives that: how they communicate, what pain looks like when they will not say it, and the difference between a bad day and an emergency.
The person who takes over for good
One day this stops being temporary. The same pages that got a sitter through a Tuesday get a guardian through the first month. Nothing has to be rewritten for them; it is already there.
Prepare
Every question, before you start.
These are the 20 sections this letter draws from. Open any one to read what it asks for. You will not see all of them: a few questions at the start shape the form around the person you care for, and the sections that do not fit are never asked. Nothing is required, and a section you skip simply will not appear.
It also produces a one-page emergency sheet and a set of care cards, from the same answers.
The first section is the one that helps most.
A caregiver letter with the morning routine and nothing else is already worth more to whoever arrives on Monday than the complete letter that never got written.