Family members calling the office multiple times a week to ask whether the caregiver showed up, how the visit went, and what their loved one ate -- calls that consume coordinator time and signal a care transparency problem?
Families discovering a fall or incident 48 hours after it happened because the caregiver reported it to the office but nobody notified the family directly?
Family Communication Portal for Home Care
Family members paying for or overseeing a relative's home care have no direct visibility into what happens during each visit. They rely on the caregiver calling them, or calling the agency office themselves, to find out whether the visit happened, how it went, and whether anything concerning occurred. That reliance doesn't scale -- and the gap in transparency is a direct trust problem for the agency.
We build family communication portals for home care agencies that give families real-time visit updates, care task summaries, incident notifications, schedule visibility, and billing access without routing every question through a coordinator. Fewer inbound calls, stronger family confidence, and a documented communication record the agency can point to at any review.
Real-time visit check-in and check-out notifications
Care task completion summary after each visit
Incident alerts directly to the family
Schedule and caregiver profile visibility
RaftLabs builds custom family communication portals for home care agencies. The portal delivers real-time push and email notifications when a caregiver checks in and checks out of each visit, a care task completion summary after every visit with caregiver notes, incident alerts sent directly to the family at the time of reporting rather than relayed through a coordinator, schedule and caregiver profile visibility so families know who is coming and when, and billing and invoice access for the family member who is the payment contact. The result is fewer inbound calls to the coordination team, stronger family trust in the agency, and a documented communication record that supports both care quality and client retention. Fixed cost, 10 to 12 week delivery.
Real-timeVisit notifications
·Family + AgencyTransparency
·FixedCost delivery
·10-12Week delivery cycles
Family portal built to give families visibility without increasing coordinator workload
Family communication is a care quality problem and a business retention problem at the same time. Families who feel uninformed about their relative's care are far more likely to switch agencies -- not because the care quality is poor, but because they cannot see that it is not. A family that calls the office three times a week asking for updates has already lost confidence in the agency's ability to communicate proactively. The portal exists to prevent that confidence from eroding.
The instinct of most agencies is to solve the communication problem by asking coordinators to call families more often. That approach doesn't scale past a small caseload. A coordinator managing forty clients cannot make proactive update calls after every visit. The portal shifts that communication burden from the coordination team to the system -- families get the information they need when they need it, automatically, without a coordinator picking up the phone.
What we build
Visit notifications and check-in updates
Push notification and email sent to the family member when the caregiver checks in at the visit and again when they check out. The notification includes the caregiver's name, the scheduled visit start time, and the actual arrival time if different from what was planned. A late arrival notification is triggered if the caregiver checks in beyond a configurable threshold past the scheduled start -- so the family knows before they call the office to ask. The visit completion notification includes the actual visit duration so the family can see the visit ran to its full length rather than being cut short.
Care task summary after each visit
After each visit, the family portal displays which care tasks were completed and which were not, with any caregiver notes attached to that visit record. The task categories visible to families are configured by the agency -- personal care completion, nutrition and hydration, medication prompt, mobility and exercise, household tasks -- so the agency controls the level of clinical detail shared. Care notes written by the caregiver during or after the visit are visible to the family in the portal, with the agency able to moderate which note types are shared and which are kept internal to the coordination team.
Caregiver profiles and continuity tracking
The family portal displays the profile of the caregiver assigned to each visit: name, photo, qualifications, and languages spoken. A visit history per caregiver shows the family how many times a particular caregiver has worked with their relative, which matters for families tracking continuity of care. When a substitute caregiver is assigned to a regular slot -- because the regular caregiver is absent -- the family receives a notification so they are not surprised by an unfamiliar face at the door.
Schedule visibility
A family-facing schedule view shows upcoming visits with date, time, duration, and assigned caregiver. Schedule changes made by the agency are reflected in the portal in real time -- a rescheduled visit or a changed caregiver appears immediately without the family needing to call to confirm the arrangement. When a family member wants to request a schedule change, they can submit the request through the portal and it is routed to the coordinator as a task rather than arriving as a phone call that may be missed or not documented.
Incident and concern notifications
When an incident is reported by the caregiver or logged by the coordinator -- a fall, a change in condition, a safeguarding concern -- the family is notified immediately via push notification and email with the agency's documented response at the time of reporting. Families can log a concern through the portal themselves, and that concern is routed to the coordinator as a flagged task rather than a phone call that may not reach the right person. The resolution status of each concern is visible in the portal so the family can see whether the agency has responded and what action was taken.
Billing and invoice access
Family members who are the billing contact for the client can view invoices, payment history, and upcoming billing dates directly in the portal. Each invoice is downloadable as a PDF for personal records or insurance submissions. Where the agency has configured online payment, private pay clients can pay directly through the portal rather than posting a cheque or calling with card details. Funding source documentation -- long-term care insurance claim submissions, private pay receipts -- is viewable by authorised family members so the person managing the financial side of care has a single place to find what they need.
Frequently asked questions
Access is configured per client record. The agency can grant portal access to multiple family members for a single client -- a primary contact, an adult child managing the finances, a sibling who wants visit summaries -- each with a different access level. The primary contact might have full access including billing and care notes. A second family member might see visit summaries and the schedule but not financial records. The access tiers are defined by the agency during configuration so sensitive information -- billing details, clinical care notes -- is only visible to the family members the agency and the primary contact have authorised to see it.
The agency configures which care note types and task categories are visible to families in the portal. Internal coordination notes -- staffing comments, billing flags, internal communications about the client -- are never visible in the family portal. Care tasks visible to families are set at the task category level: personal care, nutrition, medication prompt, mobility, and household tasks can be individually toggled on or off. Clinical observation notes written by a caregiver can be moderated before they appear in the portal, or set to appear automatically depending on the agency's preference. The configuration is done once during setup and can be adjusted by the agency administrator at any time.
The portal reduces the volume of routine inbound calls -- the calls asking whether the caregiver showed up, what happened during the visit, and when the next visit is scheduled. Families who would have called three times a week to get that information can find it in the portal without picking up the phone. The coordination team still handles calls about care plan changes, concerns that require a conversation, and scheduling requests that need discussion. The portal captures those requests too -- concern logs and schedule change requests submitted through the portal are routed to the coordinator as tasks -- so the communication is documented rather than relying on the coordinator's memory of a phone call.
A family portal covering real-time visit notifications, care task summaries, schedule visibility, caregiver profiles, incident notifications, and billing access typically takes 10 to 12 weeks from requirements sign-off to go-live. Adding integrations with an existing care management system or scheduling platform adds time depending on the API availability of the existing system. If RaftLabs is also building the underlying care management platform, the portal is added as a module rather than a standalone build, which reduces the total timeline. Cost is fixed and agreed before development starts based on the features, integrations, and number of configurable access tiers scoped in discovery.
Tell us what care information families currently ask for most and how coordinators handle those requests today. We will scope a portal that reduces inbound calls and builds family trust.
