Legal & Planning

A New Way to Create a Letter of Intent

Seeing your child with special needs get older brings up a lot emotions. Your feel pride when you think about the progress your child has made, you think about how far they have come and how much they have grown. As your child starts to get older you start looking towards the future with the fear of uncertainty: Who will watch over my child when I am unable to? Who will take care of them? Who will even know their basic needs and desires?

A Letter of Intent

For this reason it is strongly suggested that every parent of a child with special needs create a letter of intent. The Letter of Intent is a document that you create that passes vital information about a person with a disability to future caregivers.  It can include such things as your child’s sleeping preferences, eating habits, and many other important aspects of your child’s daily routine (to see what should be included in a letter of intent read: The top 10 Items to have in your letter of intent).Generally this is a typed up document that you update on a yearly basis.

The Challenges of a Letter of Intent

Creating a letter of intent poses many challenges. 1. Losing the document How often do we misplace digital documents or delete them by mistake. Many times we create a document and have no recollection of where it was saved and on what device. 2. Formatting the document Remember a letter of intent is not a document written for you. It needs to be written clearly and in an organized fashion so someone else will understand it. It can be pretty difficult to organize the hundreds of details that you need to include in a letter of intent. 3. Remembering to update Remembering to update the letter of Intent is never easy especially if you only update it once or twice a year. 4. Indecision Deciding to include and what to exclude in a letter of intent can drive you crazy. How do you know if the document you are creating is overkill or more needs to be added?

A New Way to Write a Letter of Intent

A new company has decided to make things a little bit easier. Say goodbye to the notebooks, lost documents, and unorganized content and say hello to Vestidd.

What is Vestidd?

Vestidd is a tool for those who have a child or loved one with special needs. It helps organize important information and share it with key people in their life. Vestidd also helps you prepare for life transitions.

How Does it work?

Vestidd uses the terms Vests and Pockets.

Vests

You create a Vest for each child that you would like to store information about. If you want to log information about three individuals you would create three vests.

Vest Categories

[caption id="attachment_17698" align="alignright" width="300"] Click to enlarge[/caption] This is where Vestidd can really help you stay organized and keep your child's information up-to-date. Vest provides 18 different categories where you can enter information about your child. Category types include:

• Family Members
• Caregivers and Key People
• Emergency and Safety Plan
• Diet & Meal Plan
• Diagnosis & Health Reports
• Health Care information
• Behavior
• Education
• Transitions

If you need to enter information into a different type of category that is not listed you can always add your your own categories.

Pockets

Each Vest Category contains pockets. The pockets are where you can further breakdown pieces of information. For example in the Emergency & Safety Category you will find 12 Pockets. You will put different pieces of your emergency and safety information in different pockets. Pocket types include:

• Away from home
• Disaster Communication Plan
• Emergency Doctor Contact
• Home Safety

In each pocket you would enter the relevant information. You can also upload necessary files from your computer to Vestidd.

Sharing

One of the benefits of Vestidd is its sharing features. You can share a Vest or multiple Vests with close friends, family members and teachers. This can be very helpful in two ways. 1. Family Members can collaborate to fill out Vest Sections and pockets. This way the burden isn't only on your shoulders. 2. If G-d forbid something were to happen to you. There are other family members who have access to the information and can start using it to provide care.

The Technology

Vestidd is a cloud based system that works seamlessly whether you are using a desktop or a mobile phone. While there are no apps available the site is mobile friendly and can be used on any smartphone or tablet. Interested in learning more? Check out www.vestidd.com Do you have a letter of intent? Would you consider using Vestidd? Tell us in the comments below.