Data & privacy

It's your child's record. You decide who reads it.

Parla holds more than a word count. It can hold sleep, incidents, toileting, medication and engagement — and it's built to export into IEP meetings and clinical reports. That's useful, and it's exactly why the rules below are written down.

Optional by default

Only a name is required. Every metric can be switched off.

Role-based

Teachers see progress, not personal-care entries.

Delete means delete

Removed from reports, exports and backups.

What we hold, and who sees it

Child profile

DevelopmentalRequired

First name or nickname, age band, communication stage.

Raw entries
Everyone on the care team
Trends & reports
Everyone on the care team
Kept for
Kept while the account is open.

AAC board activity

CommunicationOptional

Words tapped, unique vocabulary, time of day, repeat-tap rate.

Raw entries
Parents and anyone they mark as clinical
Trends & reports
Everyone on the care team
Kept for
Rolling 24 months, then aggregated to monthly totals.

Milestones & skills

DevelopmentalOptional

First requests, imitation, two-word combinations, skill movement.

Raw entries
Parents, SLPs, OTs, teachers
Trends & reports
Everyone on the care team
Kept for
Kept while the account is open — it's the child's history.

Parent logs & Pip conversations

Health & personal careOptional

What you type or say about a day, and what Pip pulls out of it.

Raw entries
Parents only
Trends & reports
Care team sees extracted milestones and patterns, never the raw text
Kept for
Rolling 24 months unless you delete sooner.

School & therapy session notes

DevelopmentalOptional

What a teacher, SLP or OT documented in a session.

Raw entries
The author, parents, and anyone the note is shared with
Trends & reports
Everyone on the care team
Kept for
Kept while the account is open.

Daily health & personal care

Health & personal careOptional

Sleep hours, meltdowns or incidents, toileting successes, vitamins or medication taken, appetite, gut/digestion notes.

Raw entries
Parents only, plus any clinician a parent explicitly grants clinical access
Trends & reports
Only people with clinical access. Teachers and general caregivers never see these day-level entries.
Kept for
Rolling 12 months, then reduced to monthly averages.

The questions people actually ask

What is mandatory to log?

Only a name for the child so the app has something to call them. Every metric — sleep, toileting, incidents, vitamins, engagement, motor scores — is optional and can be turned off in Parent mode without breaking anything else. Skipping a day never penalises you, which is also why the streak counts days you showed up, not days your child performed.

Who can see raw day-level entries?

Parents and account owners always. Invited members see only what their role allows: a teacher or general caregiver sees board activity and milestones, not personal-care or health entries. Clinical access — which unlocks health trends — is granted per person by a parent and can be revoked at any time from the Care team screen.

What goes into an export or IEP pack?

You choose the date range and the sections before anything is generated, and you see the full document before it leaves the app. Health and personal-care detail is excluded from provider-facing exports unless you explicitly include it.

How long is data kept?

Health and personal-care entries: 12 months at day-level detail, then reduced to monthly averages. Board activity and parent logs: 24 months. Milestones and session notes are kept for the life of the account because they are the child's developmental history.

What does deleting actually do?

Deleting a single entry removes it from the database and from every future report or export — it is not soft-hidden. Deleting the child's record removes the profile, board, favourites, logs, notes and metrics within 30 days, including from backups. Exports you already downloaded or shared are copies we no longer control.

Do you sell or train on this data?

No. We never sell data and we never use an identified child's records to train models. AI features process your text to produce your own summaries and reports.

Who owns it?

The family. A clinician or school who loses access to a child keeps their own session notes, not the family's logs. Parents can export everything at any time.

Change who sees what, any time.

Every invite sets a role and a clinical-access switch, and both can be changed or revoked from the Care team screen.

Open care team settings