For centres · 5 min
Bringing families into KeepCount
Each family member gets their own invitation from the centre and signs in without a password. They see their own children only: the day, messages and, where the centre sends them, photos shared with consent. At sign-out, staff see who may pick each child up.
How KeepCount works. Its section numbers are O. Reg. 137/15, checked against e-Laws on Oct 15, 2026.
Inviting family members
An owner, an administrator or the supervisor of the child’s site invites each family member from the child’s file. Office staff do not. Each person has their own sign-in, so two parents who live apart each see what is theirs, and neither sees the other’s messages.
- By email: KeepCount sends the invitation with a link and a code, good once for 7 days.
- Without an email: the centre gives the person a code in person or on a call. KeepCount sends no text messages.
- There is no password. After the first sign-in, the family member can add a passkey on their phone.
Family members brought in with the move from another app are added, not invited: no email goes out until the centre sends the invitation. Removing a family member from the child’s file ends their access at once.
Photo consent, child by child
Photos are shared only for a child whose consent is on file. A family member gives it in the app, or a care administrator records it from the family’s signed form. Either can withdraw it, and photos already shared stop showing. A family member gets photos only once the centre ticks Receives photos for them on the child’s file; it is off until then.
- A photo reaches families only while every child in it has consent. Leave out any child without it.
- Staff share photos from the room’s screen.
- Families see the last month of photos. The centre keeps them for 90 days, or another period it sets from 30 to 365 days.
- Photos are never emailed, and sharing one sends no alert.
- Before a photo is shared, its note is shown as the families will read it. The person who shared it, or an administrator or the site’s supervisor, can correct or remove the note afterwards; families then see only the corrected one.
The pick-up list and sign-out
For each child, the regulation requires a record of the names of the people to whom the child may be released (s. 72(1), para. 5). In KeepCount that is the pick-up list on the child’s file: names, phone numbers, whether photo ID was checked, and notes. A parent or guardian without a family sign-in goes on it too, and so does anyone who may not pick the child up, for example under a court order. Care administrators keep it; families can see the names, not the phone numbers or notes, and never a person marked as not to pick the child up.
- At sign-out, staff tap the person from the list, with their notes and whether photo ID was checked. A family member or a person on the list marked as not allowed to pick up is never offered, and a sign-out to that name, or one close to it, is refused.
- A family’s pick-up note for the day shows beside the child on the room screen. In the sign-out form, the staff who read the child’s messages see what it says; anyone else is told there is a note and whom to ask.
- When a parent says at drop-off that someone else picks up today, the room’s staff note it with Who picks up on the child’s row: the name, who said so and a short note. It is for that day only. Whoever signs the child out sees it and can answer that a parent approved the person; the departure still shows in Needs a look as someone not on the pick-up list.
A child may be released only to people a parent has named, or under a parent’s written permission for the child to leave on their own at a set time, and the centre’s arrival and dismissal policy says so (s. 50(a)). For anyone who is not on the list, check with a parent or guardian before releasing the child, and write down who approved it and how.
Writing to families
Write about a child in that child’s own conversation: it goes to that child’s family members who get messages, and to the room’s staff, the supervisors, the administrators and the owners. A message to a room or a site goes to every family there, so it names no child. A message sent to the wrong families can be withdrawn by the person who wrote it, that day, or by an administrator or the site’s supervisor at any time; the families stop seeing it at once.
Alerts to families say only that there is a new message from the centre. They never carry a child’s name, a subject or what was written, and families get no email for a message.
What families see
- The day: arrival and departure, sleep, the room’s outdoor times and the menu with its substitutions (never one noted for a single child), and the day’s photos for family members who receive photos. Medication times show where the centre turns them on.
- That an incident report was made, once the parent has been told. Never what it says.
- Allergies, the pick-up list’s names and the other family members, and the emergency contacts’ names and relationships where the centre shows them.
- The calendar and their messages with the centre.
They see their own children only, never another child or a staff record. The one thing they change in the app is photo consent; for anything else in the file they write to the centre.
Sources
O. Reg. 137/15 as consolidated on e-Laws (consolidation from July 1, 2026; last amendment O. Reg. 197/26). This guide explains how KeepCount works; it is not legal advice, and the Ministry’s program advisors decide compliance.