Risk management and waiver forms

The most important thing to remember when running your camp is the amount of trust parents are putting in you and your staff. That’s why safety has to be your number-one priority — and why you need to take so many precautions before getting your camp up and running.

Summer camp parental consent forms. During the registration process, you need to get consent from parents. This can be for the camp in general, as well as for specific day trips you have planned throughout the summer. It’s simple: permission slips and consent forms are evidence that a parent knew about and approved of an activity that was happening at camp. Say your camp offers a physically intense activity such as ziplining. You want to make sure that parents are aware this activity is happening ahead of the camp experience and that they grant permission for their child to participate in this activity.

Summer camp medical forms. A thorough medical history of each camper should be provided before your camp begins. These forms alert you of any allergies or medical conditions that a camper has so that you can proceed accordingly for the duration of the camp. For instance, if a camper needs to take a certain medication regularly, you can make sure that routine is being observed and that the camper is properly following any medical protocols.

Summer camp release and waiver. Release forms help protect camps in the case of an accident or other unexpected incident occurring at the camp. They’re important legal documents that are key to the healthy operation of a camp. A release form outlines the activities and risks present at the camp and includes the acknowledgement and assumption of said risks. Release forms are a bit complicated; anyone who runs a summer camp should be intimately familiar with them. For more information, check out the American Camp Association’s Releases and Related Issues page.

Consent forms, releases, waivers, e-signatures, terms of use

Jotform is well-designed to collect all of this necessary paperwork — from consent to releases to terms of use. Jotform also makes it easy to collect signatures, so that the distribution, signing, and collection of forms is seamless.

There are parental consent, waivers, medical and many other templates on Jotform that will make your camp shine. Browse the options and make sure you choose a form that is suitable for your camp and customize it as needed. For instance, you can manually create a waiver form, adding as many text fields as you need to adequately outline the activities and risks that come with your camp.

As you create your waiver form, certain widgets might come in handy. For instance, you’ll need to collect signatures in your form, so using an E-signature widget is a must. Say you need the signature of a primary care physician on a medical form. Online forms make it easy to send your form to the appropriate party and quickly collect the signature you need.

Waivers, releases, and consent forms can be wordy. How are you going to fit all of that fine print on one online form? Not to worry. The short scrollable terms widget helps you save on vertical space and lets users quickly scroll through the necessary text. This widget can also easily be configured to fit in with the look of your form. Lots of (important) text doesn’t have to get in the way of a nice-looking and easy-to-navigate form.

If you’re looking for a more general type of waiver, there are also plenty of templates on the Jotform site to use for this purpose.

With some know-how, it’s pretty simple to create a comprehensive waiver, consent, or release form in JotForm. These are complex documents — it’s worth carefully creating them and making sure you’re outlining all of the necessary information (risks, activities, etc.) on the form and collecting all of the signatures you need. It may not be the most glamorous or exciting part of the camp management process, but it’s arguably the most important.

You have the medical records and consent. But are you HIPAA-friendly?

When collecting medical information from potential campers, you have to be aware of and respect privacy laws. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) set up certain safeguards to protect medical data and information and prevent it from being exploited. Summer camps must be careful when collecting medical forms. You don’t want to finish collecting your campers’ medical information and learn that you haven’t been HIPAA-friendly.

Jotform makes it easy for users to build HIPAA-friendly forms. You can collect all the medical information you need in one centralized place — while still keeping it private and secure. Jotform’s form builder uses hardware and software that ensures the highest level of information protection. But you don’t need to think about all of the technical wizardry going on in the background. You can just focus on building your form, which shouldn’t take more than a few minutes and requires no technical expertise.

These forms work on mobile platforms and can be customized to gather the information you need. They can also be integrated into other third-party HIPAA-friendly apps, such as Google Sheets and Salesforce. As your campers, or more often, their parents, fill out important medical information, they won’t have to worry about whether this sensitive information is going to be mishandled. With Jotform, their medical records will be safe.

Photo by Luke Southern on Unsplash