On-call coverage & your backup

Every doula in a collective has a backup. Urgent calls escalate to them before reaching the collective owner.

If you're part of a collective, on-call coverage makes sure an urgent client contact never goes unanswered. Every doula names a backup — when you don't respond to an urgent contact, it escalates to your backup, and ultimately to the collective owner.

This is separate from on-call windows, which are the per-client labor-coverage windows. Coverage is about who catches an urgent call when you can't.

Set your backup (mobile)

In the Cradled mobile app: Business → Practice tools → On-call coverage.

  • Under Your backup, tap Choose a backup (or Change backup) and pick a teammate. They're shown as your Primary backup.
  • When you don't answer an urgent contact, it goes to your backup next. If your backup doesn't answer either, it falls to the collective owner.

You need to be in a collective to set a backup — the backup is another doula in your collective. If you're not in one yet, the screen will say so.

The owner's view (web)

If you own a collective, the web Team → Coverage tab shows every doula, their backup, and their status:

  • On call — available and covering their own clients.
  • Away → [name] until [date] — currently handed off to a backup.
  • No backup — falls to you — this doula hasn't named a backup, so their urgent calls escalate straight to you. Nudge them to set one.

The panel summarizes it plainly: either "Every doula has a backup" or "N doulas have no backup — their urgent calls fall to you."

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