Parent and Child are both clients--same email
Answered
I have a few situations where the parent is a client and so is their child. The parent would like to use their email address, the same email address for both themselves and their children. How can we make this happen?
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Hi Alisa, to address this, leave the minor client's email field blank, and disable access to the Portal for the minor client under Edit Details > Client Portal. Next, add the parent as a Contact under Edit Details > Contacts, and grant the parent access to the Portal. Finally, link the existing parent's Contact to the second sibling's profile under Edit Details > Contacts. This way, the parent will be able to use a single login to manage both of their children's Client Portals.
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Hi Debbie, happy to help. Simply delete the minor client's email address from their email field under Edit Details > Basic Info, and you'll be able to add the email to the parent Contact associated with the client. Let me know if you have any additional questions about this - I'm here to help.
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I feel stuck in this too... I deleted the email from the minor. The parent is now a client with us so I need the email address to work for the parent portal so I tried these recommendations. Now I go back into the minor and have the parent as the contact but when I try to turn on appointment reminders by email it won't let me save the changes so how do they get the telehealth links without the email in there?
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I think I may have found something that works. I went to the child's record, selected edit client, then went to contacts tab, then selected the manage tab (located at the far right corner of the contact box), there was a drop down menu item that I selected called "make an individual client" and when I selected that it made a client profile for the parent/guardian. This allowed me to use the same address to send consents and appointments for the parent. Hope this helps!
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For me, the key was disabling client portal access as Gillian descried above. I was confused because the minor's email had been changed, yet even when I tried making the contact into a regular client, SP said the email was still in use. The key was that under the "client portal" tab, the email was still being used to access that. I disabled access and voila, I can now give the parent their own client portal access to sign their documents. Thanks!
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Hello! I am really stuck on this issue as well. I have added the parent email to the Basic Client info tab. The minor clients email is not in the profile. When I go to the Client Portal there is no place I can disable access. The parent email in in the client portal info but will not allow me to proceed as it states his email is already in use. I am completely stuck after reading the above posts.
Could SP please advise?
Thank you! -
Susanne, have you tried adding the parent email as a contact instead of in the basic info? When you click "Edit" for a client there should be some tabs at the top (Client info, Billing and Insurance, Contacts, Client Portal). In the contacts section you can add the parent as a contact which has worked better for us rather than using their email in the basic info section. Then in the "client portal" section you can enable or disable different emails. Hope that helps.
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Can you explain further how to "link" a parent email to two sibling clients as is suggested above? I have a parent of two clients--one minor and one adult--however this parent pays for the adult client's services, schedules appointments etc and requires access to both the adult and minor clients' client portals.
Is there a way to use the same parent email for two accounts or to link them?
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Ellen,
You can go to your client's profile, click edit, then click the Contacts tab. Click Add Contact then add the parent. This will allow them access to the portal. Of course, get consent from the adult client first. If the parent is already a contact, you can search for them after you click Add Contact.
If it says the email is already in use, try the solutions posted above. Sometimes the parent's email was used as a primary for a minor in which you have to go and change that to a contact instead of a primary email.
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I have a situation where I have two minor siblings and one parent email. I am attempting to send intake forms out. They sent out without a hitch to the first sibling, but for the second, I received an error message indicating that the parent email is already in use. I left the minor client's email field blank, and disable access to the Portal for the minor client under Edit Details > Client Portal. The parent is noted as a Contact under Edit Details > Contacts, and grant the parent access to the Portal. I do not see a way to link the existing parent's Contact to the second sibling's profile under Edit Details > Contacts as suggested. Has anyone had success with this? I reached out for support and am wondering how long I will need to wait? I really dislike leaving a parent hanging with only one child's forms delivered.
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Hey Alberta,
When you go to the second client's profile and click Edit > Contacts do you see on the top right it says "Add Contact"? It's a button at the top of the white part of the page. When you click that you can search for the contact you've already made and add them to the second client's profile. If you don't see this option, my only guess is that it's a feature they didn't roll out to everyone right away and you could try requesting it. But I would think by now everyone should have it.
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Yes, I echo everyone's frustration! I have siblings and parent/child combinations. The Gmail workaround does not even work. I have not had any success with the proposed solutions. I see that for the past few months comments have been added, yet no additional response or further assistance offered. What can we do to receive help? TIA
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Nicholas H's suggestion to "add" the parent from the list of existing contacts rather than writing in the parents information as if I were creating a new contact has seemed to resolve the issue for me. It is confusing as I did not immediately realize that existing contacts can be added and I had been attempting to just write in the parent's information for both children.
I hope this will help others too as I agree it was not clear from the instructions offered by SP. Thanks, Nicholas!
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Hi everyone,
We sincerely apologize for the time it's taken to address this post.
To give you some context around our support processes, our Customer Success Group has been inundated with requests since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. We're currently working on how to efficiently respond to Community Forum posts during these unprecedented times. However, the quickest way for you to get in touch with us directly regarding questions with your account or your clients is by submitting a SimplePractice Help Request Form. You can also reach us on our Live Chat feature, offered Tuesday - Thursday, 7am - 6pm PT (learn more here).
To answer the question posed here, here's how you can link a guardian's profile that already exists in your SimplePractice account to a second minor's profile:
When first creating the second minor's profile
- Click +Create > +Create Client in the blue header of your SimplePractice account.
- Select Minor.
- On the Contacts tab, click Add Existing Client or Contact.
- Use the search box to search for the guardian's name.
- When the existing profile shows up, select the profile.
- Follow the prompts to complete the process of adding this contact.
After the minor profile already exists
- Click Edit beneath the minor's name > click the Contacts tab > click +Add Contact.
- Use the search box to search for the guardian's name.
- When the existing profile shows up, select the profile.
- Follow the prompts to complete the process of adding this contact.
Although we're periodically monitoring the Community Forum and plan on improving our response times to questions posed here, this is also a place for customers to exchange ideas and engage with one another on how to best use our platform. Thank you all for acting as resources for each other in the meantime.
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Hi Mary,
If you have a parent entered as a contact for a minor, and you then are going to see the parent individually as a client, here's how you can create an individual profile for them using the same contact information:
- Go to the minor client's profile > click Edit > Contacts.
- To the right of the mother's name, click Manage > Convert to Individual Client.
The mother will remain a contact on the minor's profile, while also having her own individual profile using the same email and phone number.
Hi Lara,
Here's how you can add an existing client as a contact to another client's profile:
- Go to the minor's profile > click Edit > Contacts.
- Click +Add Contact.
- Use the search box to search for the parent's existing profile and click that profile.
- Follow the prompts to continue adding this pre-existing profile as a contact on the minor's profile.
For more detail on managing minor client profiles, I highly recommend reviewing this guide in our Help Center: Enhanced Client Management for Minors.
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