Why your family needs a care diary – and what happens when you don’t have one
If you support a family member or whānau with a disability in New Zealand, April 2026 is not a normal month. Whaikaha is rolling out significant changes to how Disability Support Services funding is allocated, reviewed, and documented. ACC is updating its supported living assessment processes. WINZ is tightening its evidence requirements for Supported Living Payment reviews.
What this means practically: families and support workers who can’t produce clear, dated records of the care they provide are going into these reviews at a serious disadvantage.
This post is about why written care records matter more than most families realise and what an easy, affordable way to keep them looks like.
The hidden risk in informal caregiving
Most family carers in New Zealand keep care information in their heads, in scattered text message threads, or in notebooks that live on a kitchen bench. That works fine, until it doesn’t.
The moment a funding review opens, a formal complaint is made, or a care arrangement is questioned by an assessor, informal records become almost useless. An assessor asking “what support did your son receive on the 14th of February” doesn’t want your memory. They want a record.
Support workers face the same problem from a professional angle. Without a clear daily log, they have no protection if a family disputes what happened, and no evidence to support their own funding claims.
What the April 2026 changes actually mean for documentation
Under the updated Whaikaha framework, evidence of care provided is increasingly central to how funding allocations are set and renewed. This isn’t just about formal assessments. It affects:
- Plan reviews and funding renewals
- ACC supported living and attendant care claims
- WINZ Supported Living Payment applications and reviews
- Any situation where a care provider or family member needs to demonstrate what support was delivered and when
The shift is away from “tell us about your situation” and toward “show us your records.” Families who have been keeping care notes, even simple daily ones are significantly better positioned for this.
What a care diary actually needs to do
A good disability care diary doesn’t have to be complicated. It needs to:
- Be easy enough that support workers and family members actually use it every day
- Record who did what, when, and any observations about the person’s wellbeing
- Be shareable, so a parent can see what a support worker logged, and a supervisor can spot patterns
- Create a timestamped record that can’t be altered after the fact
- Store data securely, with family control over who has access
Most families cobble this together with WhatsApp groups, shared Google Docs, or nothing at all. That works until there’s a dispute and then the gaps in the record become the story.
How MyLog was built for this
MyLog is New Zealand’s first dedicated disability care diary, built specifically for the way families, whānau, and support workers actually operate here.
It was designed around one core insight: the people who need to keep records are often exhausted, time-poor, and not particularly interested in learning new software. So MyLog is deliberately simple. A support worker can log a daily note in under a minute. A parent can check what happened during a shift without making a phone call. Everyone involved in a person’s care works from the same shared record.
Plans start at $15 a month. Unlimited caregivers are included on every plan. There’s a 14-day free trial so you can see whether it works for your family before you pay anything.
The one thing worth doing before April
If you’re reading this and you don’t have a consistent care record, starting one now is the single highest-leverage thing you can do to protect your family going into this period of change.
It doesn’t have to be MyLog. A consistent dated notebook is better than nothing. But if you want something that’s shareable, secure, accessible on any device, and built for exactly this situation. MyLog is worth fifteen minutes of your time.
