The short answer
Once, online, stored against the child, reused by every booking after that. Medical and pick-up details included. The parent updates it when something changes rather than filling it in again.
If a family completes a registration form more than once a year at your club, the process is wrong.
What parents experience now
The common setup is a paper pack in September, a fresh medical form before the summer, and a note at the door whenever an aunt is collecting. It reads as disorganised to the parent and it is genuinely risky for you, because the detail that matters most is in a folder rather than on the register the staff member is holding.
Booking software built for clubs, ClassForKids, Sawyer, iPAL or Bookeo, holds a child record. Once registration lives in that record, the second booking asks for nothing.
What it has to collect
Six groups, and no more than you need:
- Child. Name, date of birth, school and year, address.
- Contacts. Parents or carers, and at least one emergency contact who is not the first parent.
- Medical. Doctor, allergies, conditions, medication held at club, dietary requirements.
- Collection. Who may collect, a password for anyone not on the list, whether the child may leave alone, and any arrangement staff must know about.
- Permissions. Photographs, off-site trips, sun cream and first aid, emergency treatment.
- Declaration. Behaviour policy, fees and cancellation terms, privacy notice, signature and date.
Where it should live
In the booking platform, against the child, not in a website form that emails a copy to a shared inbox.
Medical and safeguarding details are sensitive information in every privacy regime we work under. Keeping them in a system with access control, rather than in an inbox several people can open, is the single biggest improvement most clubs can make. This is orientation rather than legal advice; your regulator and your insurer set the standard you have to meet.
Say why you are asking
Next to the questions, a short paragraph: why you need this, who sees it, how long you keep it, and who to contact to change or delete it. Two or three sentences. Parents are more forthcoming about a medical detail when they can see where it goes.
Keep the booking short
Registration and booking are different jobs. Booking picks the days and takes the money. Registration is required before the first session, triggered by the confirmation email and chased the week before if it is not done.
Putting them in one form breaks both: the booking gets abandoned on a phone, and the registration gets rushed.
Renew by confirming, not retyping
Once a year, and before a new holiday programme, prefill everything and ask the parent to check it. Record the date they confirmed. That is a two minute task instead of a fifteen minute one, and it gives you a defensible record of when each detail was last verified.
Give pick-up changes a proper route
The most common real change is a one-off collector. Give it a named route: a short form submitted by the registered parent with the collector's name and the password, arriving somewhere staff will see it before the end of the session.
Publish the deadline for a same-day change and what happens if nobody tells you, which is that the child is not released. Written down, that policy stops arguments at the door.
What the website page says
The registration page on your site does not contain the form. It explains what will be asked, that it takes about ten minutes, that it only has to be done once, and what happens next, then links into the platform.
Replace the downloadable PDF pack. Keep a paper route for the few families who need it, but do not make it the default the site offers.
Where this sits
Registration and consent collected once and reused is one of the six things we build into an after-school and holiday club website, and the same principle runs through the other childcare websites we make. Packages are on pricing. Ask once, store it properly, and let every booking after that take thirty seconds.