# Manage household people and safety context > PositiveForm guide · Households · HH-003 > Canonical page: https://positiveform.com/guides/households/manage-household-people/ > This Markdown: https://positiveform.com/guides/households/manage-household-people.md **Summary:** Add or update people, relationships, and emergency contacts in a household. People and informational relationships save without implying billing, portal… **Who can do this:** Organization owners, Managers, Staff **Required access:** `members.change` **Where in PositiveForm:** `/households/:householdId/overview` **Status:** Draft: not yet verified against a deployed PositiveForm build. Labels may differ. > Draft: this guide describes the household profile redesign at docs/plans/2026-08-25-member-profile-redesign. Needs attention is now Required items, People moved onto Overview, and an emergency contact is now recorded on the person's own Details tab rather than here. It has not yet been replayed against the deployed demo. ## Who this is for This guide is for **desk staff, managers, and owners** keeping a family's people correct, and finding who to call in an emergency. Read this part before you start. An emergency contact is **information**, not authority. Recording someone does not let them pay, sign, collect a child, or reach the family portal. Those are separate and are granted elsewhere. Writing "can collect" in a contact record does not make it true in PositiveForm. You need the `members.change` permission. ## Before you begin - Open the right household. Everything here is scoped to this one family. - For an external emergency contact, have their first name, last name, and phone number. All three are required, because a contact you cannot ring is not a contact. - Know that an emergency contact is recorded per person on that person's own **Details** tab, not on the household. The household's **Overview** only shows one as a quick reference. ## Steps ### See who is in the household 1. Click **Households** in the left navigation and open the household. It opens on **Overview**: how many adults and children, how many are enrolled, and the household's billing line. 2. **Required items**, directly under the header, rolls up anything outstanding across the household and its people: a missing waiver, no card on file, an unpaid invoice, or a minor with no parent or guardian linked. Each row names who it is about and offers the action that clears it. The **Overview** tab carries a count badge matching the number of items; it disappears once the list is empty. 3. **People** lists a card for every person in the household: role text for an adult (for example **Father of Davis, step-father of Mia**), rank, class, and last visit, contact for an adult, and that person's own required-item count. Each card links to their profile. 4. The **Household** block summarises location, one emergency contact, the date the household was created, and the latest note. It is a quick reference pulled from elsewhere, not a place to add or edit an emergency contact. ### Add somebody 5. Click **Add person** in the header, then choose **New member** to create a person from scratch, or **Add existing member** to move somebody who already has a record; see [Add an existing person to a household](https://positiveform.com/guides/households/add-existing-person/). ### Record an emergency contact 6. Open the person's own profile and click **Details**; see [Maintain member profile and notes](https://positiveform.com/guides/members/maintain-member-profile/). 7. Under **Emergency**, click **+ Add**. 8. Choose either another adult already in this household, or an external contact. You have to choose one; PositiveForm will not accept neither. 9. For an external contact, fill in their first name, last name, and phone number. 10. Choose the **relationship**. If you pick the "other" option, describe it briefly, so the next person reading it knows who this is. 11. Save the contact. ### Remove somebody 12. Click **Remove** beside the person's card on **Overview**. This takes them out of this household. ## Expected outcome Adding a person confirms with **Adult added** or **Person added** depending on their household role, and their card appears once among **People**. Moving an existing person in confirms with **Added to household**. An emergency contact confirms with **Emergency contact added** and appears on that person's own **Details** tab, so whoever is on the desk can find it against the child rather than having to know the family structure. It may also become the one shown in the household's **Household** summary. Removing confirms with **Removed from household**. It removes them from this family; it does not delete the person, and their attendance, ranks, and history survive. None of this grants authority. A recorded contact cannot pay, sign, or reach the portal on the strength of being listed here. ## Recovery If an external contact is refused, PositiveForm says **An external contact needs a first name, last name, and phone number.** If neither an in-household adult nor an external contact is chosen, it says **Choose a household adult or an external contact.** If you pick the "other" relationship and leave it blank, it says **Briefly describe this relationship.** If saving fails, you get **Couldn't add that emergency contact.** and nothing is recorded. If you removed the wrong person, add them back; see [Add an existing person to a household](https://positiveform.com/guides/households/add-existing-person/). Nothing was deleted. If **Required items** names a waiver, that is an agreement rather than a person problem; see [Manage member agreement completion](https://positiveform.com/guides/households/manage-member-agreements/). ## Related guides - [Add an existing person to a household](https://positiveform.com/guides/households/add-existing-person/) — move somebody who already has a record into this household. - [Manage member agreement completion](https://positiveform.com/guides/households/manage-member-agreements/) — clear the agreements **Required items** is asking about. - [Maintain member profile and notes](https://positiveform.com/guides/members/maintain-member-profile/) — where an emergency contact is now recorded, on the person's own Details tab. --- Source: PositiveForm customer guides, https://positiveform.com/guides/. Every guide as one file for AI assistants: https://positiveform.com/llms-full.txt. Guide index: https://positiveform.com/llms.txt.