Trust starts with people you trust.

Recommendations, not anonymous reviews

Who recommended someone matters. REC'D BY isn't an open caregiver marketplace built around strangers advertising themselves. Caregivers become discoverable through recommendations and relationships within the REC'D BY village.

When someone you know recommends a caregiver, you have context that an anonymous rating can't provide. That doesn't mean every caregiver will be right for every family. A REC'D BY recommendation represents another person's experience and opinion. It is not a guarantee, endorsement by REC'D BY, certification of a caregiver, or substitute for your own judgment. Families should always make their own decisions about who is appropriate to care for their children, pets, home, or other loved ones.

Your village + your privacy

REC'D BY is designed to make real-world connections useful without making private household information broadly visible.

What your direct friends can see

• Your household name
• Parent/account-owner household members
• Children's names
• Children's ages
• Children's gender, when provided
• Pets' names and basic identifying information

This is intentionally limited to the type of basic family information close friends often already know. Direct friends cannot see private household information — such as home addresses, entry or security information, Wi-Fi information, detailed care instructions, private routines or notes, detailed pet-care instructions, or booking-specific private information — simply because they're connected to you.

What friends of friends can see

Extended connections have a much more limited view. Friends of friends can see the parent/account-owner members associated with your household so they can understand the relationship connecting your villages. They cannot see your children's information, pet information, home address, household instructions, security details, or other private household information.

Caregiver access

The right information for the right care. Someone caring for your family may need information that your friends don't. REC'D BY connects relevant care details to the booking so caregivers can access what they need to provide the agreed-upon care. Depending on the booking, that might include:

• Where care is taking place
• Children or pets included in the booking
• Relevant routines and instructions
• Parking or arrival information
• Household information needed during care
• Other details provided by the family for that booking

Caregiver access is designed around providing useful information for the care they're actually providing — not giving caregivers unrestricted access to your household profile.

Caregiver accounts

Babysitters, pet sitters, house sitters, grandparents, relatives, and other members of your care team don't need to create parent accounts to participate in care. Their experience is designed around what they need to do: respond to sitting requests, keep availability current, confirm bookings, stay up to date when plans change, and access relevant care information. Caregiver accounts are always free. We don't believe someone should have to pay REC'D BY for the privilege of being recommended, responding to your request, or caring for your family.

Booking your way

Families don't all coordinate care the same way, so REC'D BY supports different approaches:

First to accept

Send a request to multiple caregivers and let the first person who accepts take the booking.

Parent selects

See who is interested or available and choose the person you'd like to book.

Manual assignment

Already arranged the care somewhere else? Assign the caregiver manually so the booking, calendar information, and relevant care details still live in REC'D BY. The goal is to work with the way your family actually coordinates care — not force your family into one workflow.

Care can happen anywhere

REC'D BY bookings can be associated with the location where care is actually taking place — your home, a relative's home, a vacation property, a hotel, or another appropriate location. Traveling doesn't necessarily mean leaving your care system behind, and families may be able to use their extended village to discover recommended caregivers in other areas. As always, families are responsible for deciding whether a particular caregiver and arrangement are appropriate for their circumstances.

Background checks (Coming soon)

One more piece of the trust picture. A personal recommendation can provide meaningful context. A background check can provide different information. Neither tells you everything.

REC'D BY intends to offer background-check functionality as part of expanded membership features to give families another tool when evaluating potential caregivers. This feature isn't available yet — we'll share details as it becomes available. When it launches, background checks may be performed by third-party providers and will be subject to the information available to those providers, applicable laws, reporting limitations, identity matching, and other restrictions. A background check should not be treated as a guarantee that a person is safe, qualified, trustworthy, or appropriate for your family. Families should consider the information available to them as a whole and make their own care decisions.

Screening + family responsibility

You know your family best. REC'D BY helps you discover people through trusted connections and gives you tools that can make evaluating and coordinating care easier. It doesn't make the final decision for you. Before working with someone new, families may want to:

• Talk with the caregiver directly
• Ask the person who recommended them about their experience
• Discuss experience relevant to your family's needs
• Confirm rates, expectations, availability, and responsibilities
• Review relevant certifications or training
• Request references when appropriate
• Use available background-check tools, once offered
• Meet in person or by video before the first booking
• Make sure both the family and caregiver are comfortable with the arrangement

Certifications + training

Caregivers can provide information about certifications and training that may be relevant to families, such as CPR, pediatric first aid, food allergy and anaphylaxis training, water safety, babysitting certification, and other experience or credentials. Unless REC'D BY expressly states otherwise, information supplied by caregivers or other users should not be assumed to have been independently verified by REC'D BY. Families should request additional documentation or verification when a particular certification or qualification is important to their care decision.

Ratings + recommendations

Experience is personal. Recommendations and ratings reflect the experiences and opinions of individual families. Different families can have different experiences with the same caregiver. REC'D BY doesn't guarantee the accuracy of every opinion or recommendation, and a positive recommendation doesn't guarantee a future experience. We encourage our community to share experiences that are honest, relevant, respectful, and based on actual interactions.

Household information

REC'D BY gives families a central place to organize information used to coordinate care — household members, children, pets, care routines, home information, booking locations, caregivers, availability, scheduling, care history, recommendations, and booking instructions. Access to that information depends on the person's relationship to your household and the role they're performing. A friend browsing recommendations doesn't need the same information as Grandma caring for your children for a week, and REC'D BY is designed with that distinction in mind.

Payments

When available for an eligible booking, families can choose to process caregiver payments and tips through REC'D BY. Applicable transaction and convenience fees are disclosed as part of the payment experience. Families and caregivers can also choose to handle payment directly through supported external payment methods without REC'D BY processing the payment. When payment occurs outside REC'D BY, REC'D BY isn't a party to that transaction and can't resolve disputes involving the external payment service or transfer.

Community expectations

A useful village depends on good neighbors. We ask REC'D BY families and caregivers to be honest, recommend people based on genuine experience, respect other families' privacy, keep caregiver information accurate, communicate when plans change, and treat one another respectfully — and to remember that behind every profile, recommendation, and booking is a real person.

Read our Community Guidelines →

Our approach

Technology can help. Trust is still human. REC'D BY can organize recommendations, show you how you're connected, keep your care team together, make scheduling easier, get caregivers the information they need, and offer additional screening tools. But no app can replace your judgment about the people you trust with your family. REC'D BY is designed to give you better information, better context, and better tools to make those decisions yourself.

Good people, recommended by your people.