What is CareHaven?

CareHaven is an app for the family caregiver. Not the doctor, not the nurse, not the clinic. You, the parent, spouse, son, daughter, or friend looking after someone whose care never really switches off.

It is built for people caring for someone with complex medical, behavioral, or developmental needs, such as autism, ADHD, epilepsy, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, dementia and elder care, feeding and swallowing struggles, mobility challenges, and more. You set up a profile for the person you care for, and the app quietly reshapes itself around their situation, so you see the trackers and guidance that actually fit and aren't buried under things that don't.

The app speaks to you in plain, everyday words. When a clinical term does show up, you can tap it for a calm explanation in language that makes sense.

The problem it's built to solve

Caring for someone with complex needs comes with an invisible second job: the mental load. It's the constant background work of remembering every medication and refill, spotting the patterns that matter, planning ahead, keeping each appointment and detail straight, and being ready to explain it all the moment a sitter, a relative, or a doctor needs to know.

That weight feels much the same whatever the diagnosis is, whether you're caring for someone with autism, ADHD, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, epilepsy, ARFID, or one of the many other conditions CareHaven is built for. The app was made for parents and small-group caregivers carrying exactly this, not for a clinic, so it meets you where the day actually is.

Most apps hand that work back to you in a different shape. They give you more boxes to fill, more screens to check, more things to keep up with. CareHaven's whole job is the opposite. It is here to carry that weight for you, never to add to it. When something would make your day heavier, the app's job is to make it lighter instead.

If you look after more than one person, the load multiplies, so CareHaven holds up to 12 care recipients at once, each with their own separate profile, logs, and settings. Switching between them doesn't mix anyone's details together, so the weight of keeping each person's care straight stays off your shoulders too.

How CareHaven thinks: the Care Loop

For any care need, your mind runs through roughly four steps. CareHaven tries to walk you through all of them, so less is left on your shoulders. We call this the Care Loop.

1. Capture, with almost no effort. Jot something down fast: a feeding, a behavior, a seizure, a rough night, a quick note. Logging is meant to take seconds, not break your day.
2. Make sense of it. Raw entries become meaning. The app helps surface patterns and shows you what's normal for this person, not a stranger.
3. Guidance on what it may mean. Where it can, the app offers gentle, plain-language guidance on what something might mean and when it may be worth seeking help, always framed as a clinician's concern, never as a diagnosis from the app.
4. Carry it forward. What you've captured gets packaged for the next moment that needs it, whether that's a handoff to a sitter, a brief for a doctor's visit, or another person sharing the care.

Every step the app finishes is a step you don't have to hold in your head. To go deeper on this idea, see How CareHaven thinks (core ideas).

Private by design, no account needed

Your logs, notes, and profiles live in your iPhone's own protected storage — not on a CareHaven server. Core features work fully offline, and no account or sign-in is required to use them. If you choose to sync, only the people you specifically invite into your circle — signed into their own Apple account — can open it. Not us, not anyone else.

When you choose to back up your data, the backup file is encrypted. Smart help is private by design: obvious identifying details — like the name of the person you care for — are stripped out on a best-effort basis before any request leaves your device. Sharing care with a co-caregiver, or keeping your devices in sync, is something you opt into — sync is optional and off by default, and goes through Apple's iCloud (CloudKit), encrypted by Apple in transit and at rest, reachable only by the people you specifically invite.

This is the difference that matters: many family-care apps require an account and keep your information in their cloud. CareHaven was built the other way around, so the most personal details about the person you love stay with you. Read the full story in Privacy comes first.

Where to go next

• Who CareHaven is for Available — see whether the app fits your situation.
• How CareHaven thinks (core ideas) Available — the ideas behind the design, in plain terms.
• Privacy comes first Available — exactly how your information is kept private.
• Getting CareHaven (TestFlight & App Store) — how to get the app on your iPhone.