Record-keeping question

macchiatto

How long do you hang on to all the visit notes you get from EI, the school district, feeding therapy, that kind of thing? DS has been getting services for about 1.5 yrs and his 3-inch binder is overflowing. Wondering if I should toss all the notes and just hang on to evals, reports, IEPs. Or should I keep at least the recent ones?

Assembly_Reqd

I keep the current IFSP year's notes in the upstairs binder along with the most current IFSP documents. Everything else is bound together by year and put it in the file cabinet in the basement. We also keep old doctor visit notes, MRI disks and stuff that is no longer current or would be needed in his medical binder for an appointment in that cabinet as well.

ETA: I was gonna do what you are planning and asked a parent friend who has a 18 year old son who has autism and is deaf. She told me to keep EVERYTHING.  

macchiatto

OK, thanks! I'll definitely keep the IEPs, evals, progress reports, etc., forever; just wasn't sure about all the individual visit notes that record what we worked on that day. I might just move those to a separate binder so the main one (that I take with me to things like dev pedi appts) doesn't get too cumbersome.

MaxandRuby

I need to get around to organizing things myself (DS2's IEP goes from Feb-Feb).  I was going to scan the prior information, put it on the computer, and back that up (or scan them to disc) so the new information is ready to go. I have also thought of keeping the actual paper stuff bound and filed by year (or state since we move somewhat frequently due to being military).  I don't know if doing electric and paper files is overkill though...but it certainly isn't out of my character to do so.  ;-)

d.f

I keep everything in 3 ring binders.  I also scan everything and save electronic copies to a google drive for easy emailing.  I don't plan to get rid of anything ever.  Although, I'll eventually file it away in the crawl space after a few years.  Right now after 2 years I have 3 full-1.5 inch binders.