Babysitter and emergency information sheets

Two sheets doing two different jobs

The babysitter pack is for one evening. Where you are, when you’ll be back, what happens at bedtime, and what to do if the child wakes up asking for something you haven’t mentioned.

The emergency sheet is for the whole year. Numbers, allergies, medicines, conditions, and the details somebody would need if the evening stopped being ordinary. It lives in one place and gets handed to whoever is in charge.

Most families need both, and I keep ours on the same hook by the door. They’re deliberately separate because one changes constantly and the other almost never does.

The one thing everybody forgets

Your own address, written down, in a form somebody can read aloud to a 999 operator.

It sounds absurd. It’s the single most common gap. A sitter who has been in your house four times may still not know the postcode, and the moment they need it’s the moment nobody can think clearly. There’s a box for it, in capitals, near the top of page one for exactly this reason.

Don’t write your codes on it

The babysitter sheet says this on the page and it’s worth repeating. No alarm code, no key safe code, no note about which plant pot the spare key lives under.

That sheet spends the evening on a kitchen worktop and afterwards it goes in the recycling. Tell your sitter those things out loud.

Fill in the boring half once

Page two of the babysitter pack is the stopcock, the fuse box, the boiler, the back door, the wifi, the pet. None of it changes from one evening to the next, so fill it in properly once, keep it in a drawer, and only reprint page one.

It takes twenty minutes the first time and about ninety seconds every time afterwards. The stopcock question in particular is one nobody thinks about until water is coming through a ceiling.

The emergency sheet holds real personal data

Full name, date of birth, address, NHS number, medical history. That’s exactly the sort of information you wouldn’t want on a noticeboard where the window cleaner can read it.

Inside a kitchen cupboard door is the usual answer: findable in seconds by somebody who needs it, invisible to somebody who doesn’t. When you update it, shred the old copy rather than binning it whole.

If you photograph it to send to a grandparent, remember that the photograph then lives in a phone gallery and a cloud backup indefinitely. Handing over paper is often the better option.

Keep it current or it’s worse than nothing

An out of date emergency sheet is actively dangerous, because somebody will trust it. A number that rings out, a medicine that changed six months ago, an allergy that was added and never written down.

There’s a “last reviewed” line at the top of both pages. Put a real date in it. If you can’t remember the last time you checked, that’s your answer.

A note on the consent line

The consent section at the bottom of page two is a practical record, not a legal document. In a real emergency, staff will treat a child who needs treatment and will work to reach you regardless of what’s written on a sheet of paper.

What it does do is remove hesitation. A grandparent or a sitter holding a signed note knows where they stand, and hospital staff have your details, your child’s history and your allergy information in front of them straight away rather than piecing it together. That’s worth ten minutes with a pen. If somebody is giving medicine while you’re out, the medication record is the sheet that stops two adults both doing the four o’clock dose.