A care team for an adult with a disability that keeps them in charge of it

If they live with you, the care belongs in your household hub. They are an adult member with their own login, on their own phone or a tablet, alongside you and anyone else who lives there. Install the apps there and everyone in the house works from the same lists.

If they live in their own apartment, a supported living placement, or a group home, and the help comes from relatives in several homes, use a shared space instead. Each relative keeps their own household hub, and between them sits a space for the care that every household joins. The space holds only what is put in it: it cannot look inside anyone's home hub, and a home hub cannot pull data back out of it. One household sponsors the space from its subscription and the others join free. The person joins the space too.

Elder Care is the app that holds the team together. The name is the only thing about it that assumes age: a profile, a care log, a visit rotation, appointments, readings, and a shift log for a paid worker fit a 26-year-old with cerebral palsy as well as they fit a grandmother.

Start with a profile. It has room for where they live, their doctor and pharmacy, conditions, allergies, diet, mobility and daily help, memory and thinking, preferences and routines, and what a normal day looks like, so a change stands out. Write it with them, in their words where you can. 'Likes to be told the plan the night before' and 'shuts down if two people talk at once' are the lines a new support worker most needs and is least likely to be told.

Link the profile to their member account. Linked, they can log their own readings, such as weight, blood sugar, or how much pain they are in today, and only they can remove what they logged.

The care log is where the team stops relying on memory. Each entry is tagged General, Health, Mood, or Medication. The habit is simple: read the last few entries when your shift or visit starts, and write one when it ends. A visit rotation shows who is coming when, appointments say who is taking them, and care tasks carry a name and a due date: reorder the catheter supplies, call the wheelchair repair line, chase the support plan review.

For the numbers a doctor or a support coordinator asks about, the Vitals tab keeps blood pressure, pulse, weight, blood sugar, temperature, oxygen, sleep, appetite, and pain, each with a 90-day trend. Before an appointment, the Profile tab prints the profile, readings, log and appointments for the dates you choose as one document, or saves it as a PDF.

Any log entry can be marked family only. That keeps it from a paid support worker and from children in the household. It does not keep it from the person the care is about. If they are an adult member, they read family-only entries like any other adult. There is no setting for writing about someone behind their back. Write every entry as if they will read it, because they can.

The same rule runs through Medications. A medication is shared with the other adults unless the person it is for marks it 'Only me', and only that person can make the choice. No parent can hide an adult's medication from them, and no parent can make one private on their behalf.

Health Cards holds allergies, medicines and emergency contacts and is adults-only. Documents keeps folders that are adults-only or open to everyone. In both, an adult member with a disability is an adult. Underneath all of it, the profile, the log, the readings and the medication names are encrypted before they are stored, and only the members of that household or space can open them.

Enter each prescription in Medications with its times and days. The hub sends a nudge at each time, to the person or to someone you choose instead, and the dose is ticked off when it is taken. Name the people who should hear about a missed dose: if it is still unticked thirty minutes after its time, they are told. That alert is what a reminder app on one phone cannot do.

At home, any adult can add a medication for another adult, and after that it is theirs to change, because another adult's medication is left to that adult. In a shared space, every adult in the circle can keep the shared list up to date, which suits a team that maintains it together. A medication can carry its prescriber, its pharmacy, and the day its next refill is due. Five days before that day the hub emails the people who can see it. Medications also prints a current list and a record of doses taken, for a new doctor, a hospital admission, or a respite stay.

A support worker, personal care assistant, or aide is often there more than anyone in the family, and should not have a key to everything. Invite them as a guest in the household where they work, which is the person's own if they live independently, with only Elder Care granted. A guest has their own login and an end date you set, up to a year out, and you can remove them the day the job ends.

The worker opens a shift log: started, ended, what was done, and a handoff note that sits at the top for whoever arrives next. They can tick a care task, record a reading, and correct a reading they entered. The profile, appointments and visit rotation are read-only to them, the printed record is closed to them, and family-only entries are never sent to them.

If the family's day-to-day coordination happens in a shared space, the worker's copy of Elder Care in the household is a separate copy, and records do not move between the two. Decide which one holds the daily log before the worker starts.

For a weekend of respite care or a substitute at the day program, the information needs to travel without a login. Health Cards prints a card and can share it as a read-only link that stops working after the day, week, or month you pick. Routines holds the morning and evening in written steps, so a stand-in does them the way the person expects, and a caregiver packet copies out only the steps and notes you choose, as a link of its own.

If they live alone, Wellness Check-In adds a daily 'I'm OK': one tap on their own schedule, with a button to ask for a call. A missed check-in alerts the people you name, including a neighbor who has confirmed their email. One relative takes it, and everyone sees who.

The year a young person turns eighteen, the paperwork moves. A doctor's office that spoke to you for eighteen years may need their written permission to keep doing so. Families choose between guardianship, a power of attorney, a supported decision-making agreement, or nothing formal at all, and that is a decision for the person, the family, and often a lawyer. The hub does not make it.

What it can do is keep the result where the team can reach it. Documents holds the court order or the signed agreement, benefit letters, the support plan, and insurance cards, with PDFs and images previewing inline. Contacts keeps the support coordinator, the care agency, the day program, the pharmacy, and the neighbor with a key. In a household, Appointments keeps the recurring health visits, the annual physical, the dentist, therapy, with a nudge when it is time to book and a visit history for each person.

Families who share the cost of a ramp, a van conversion, or extra support hours fall out over arithmetic the way any family does. Expense Splitter records who paid for what and how it splits, with a receipt photo, and repeating costs are set up once. In a shared space, a reimbursement is asked for by one relative and countersigned by the other. It does not move money, and it does not connect to the person's own bank account. If they receive benefits, keep their money and the family's spending on their care in separate records, and keep the splitter for the second.

Parents of a disabled adult worry about a question other parents can put off: who does this when we cannot? A team that already works from a shared profile, a care log, a medication list, and a folder of papers has most of the answer written down. A sibling who has been in the space for years does not start from a phone call and a shoebox.

Add the next person in line to the space now, while you are there to answer their questions, and give them real jobs in it. The guide to making your household survivable if something happens to you covers the rest, the accounts and passwords and instructions, for the parts that sit in your own household rather than in the care.

• Elder Care
• Medications
• Wellness Check-In
• Health Cards
• Routines
• Documents
• Contacts
• Appointments & Check-ups
• Expense Splitter
• Calendar

Every app in the library is included with the household plan. Install the ones this guide uses and skip the rest.

• The caregiving apps compared, by what each is for
• How siblings can coordinate care for an aging parent without a group text
• Raising a grandchild or a relative's child, when it started with a phone call
• Making your household survivable if something happens to you
• Leaving the kids with a sitter: what they actually need to know