The Kids Kare at Home service provider has specific requirements before they will consider care requests for mildly-ill children. 

The following procedures have been developed by the Kids Kare at Home program, in collaboration with Kennedy Care/Safe at Home (our contracted supplier of Kids Kare services), to ensure quality child care in your home and to make the transition as easy as possible for your child(ren):

• Caregivers are dispatched on a first-come, first-served basis. Priority will be given to pre-registered parents and guardians.
• A primary reason for a back-up child care request would be if your regular child care provider or nanny is unavailable. Other requests will be considered on a case-by-case basis. We are unable to provide service for school or summer camp closings, school holidays, or snow days.
• Service requests may not be able to be fulfilled during periods of unusually-high request volumes, such as peak flu season, or during times of severe weather conditions that make travel hazardous.
• You must contact the care-provider agency, Kennedy Care/Safe at Home, at least 4 hours before you need to leave your home, to ensure adequate time to route a caregiver to your home and provide “get acquainted” time for you and your child. While Kennedy Care/Safe at Home will make every effort to get the caregiver to your home at the requested time, turnaround time after you have contacted the scheduler may be up to 4 business hours. Requests received after 9:00 p.m. will not receive a reply until after 6:00 a.m. the following morning, and a caregiver may not arrive until 10:00 a.m. or later (approximately 4 hours after the Kennedy Kare/Safe at Home office opens).
• When the caregiver arrives, you should discuss and develop a care plan for the day. You can use this Special Instructions for Today Form (PDF) to develop your plan.
• If you qualify for a subsidy, you are eligible for 48 hours of subsidized care per year, beginning January 1 and ending December 31. It is your responsibility to track how many hours you have used. Unused time does not carry over from year to year. 
• There is a minimum service usage of 4 hours per day.
• Care for one to two children will be billed at your hourly rate. If you have 3 or more children who need care, you will be billed at 1½ times your hourly rate. Please do not pay the caregiver directly. Safe at Home employees are not authorized to accept cash, credit cards, or other payment. You will be billed later.
• Caregivers cannot permit visitors or repair service personnel to have access to the parent’s home, without a parent present.
• Caregivers are not allowed to smoke in your home at any time. They are not allowed to consume the family’s food without your permission, or to make personal calls unless approved by you.
• Caregivers will not be responsible for the care of family pets. Parents may be asked to crate or otherwise confine animals while caregivers are in the home, depending on the particular caregiver’s comfort level with animals.
• Caregivers will not be responsible for any housework, other than duties necessary for the care of the child (caregivers are expected to pick up toys and clean up after the child as needed).
• Caregivers are not permitted to transport children or to divulge any personal family information under any circumstances.
• Caregivers are not responsible for the care of non-family members.