About
What Sidekick Sitter is for
Families with special-needs kids need a few hours back from time to time. A wedding. A dentist appointment. A Saturday afternoon. The hard part isn't finding a sitter — it's finding one who actually understands your kid.
We started this for Treasure Valley families who told us, over and over, that the existing options didn't fit. National apps gave them lists of college students who'd never spent time with a kid like theirs. Public programs were paperwork-heavy or out of reach. And nobody — anywhere — was building a pool of Sidekicks who already do this work for a living.
The promise
A few hours back
That's the whole offer: a few hours back, when you need them. Date night. The wedding you're in. The dentist appointment you've been putting off. The Saturday afternoon when the rest of the family is outside and you'd love to read on the porch.
Who
Who you're getting
Off-duty pros. The people who already work with kids like yours during the week — Registered Behavior Technicians, Direct Support Professionals, paraeducators, special education teachers — picking up a few hours on a weekend. They bring the experience of having sat with a hundred kids before yours. They are not flustered by the things that flustered the babysitter you tried last spring.
Trust
How we vet
Every Sidekick clears six gates before they meet your family: a national background check, a sex-offender registry check, two reference calls we make ourselves, a reviewed video introduction, signed agreements about scope of work, and verification of the professional credential on their profile. None of those are claims about who they are at heart — but they are claims we can verify, and we do.
Local
Locally owned, on purpose
We're a small company in the Treasure Valley. We are not raising venture capital, we are not building toward a national app, and we are not chasing a city that doesn't speak Boise. The places we serve today — Boise, Meridian, Nampa, Eagle — are the places we live in. The Sidekicks live here. The families live here. Decisions get made by people you can call.
Boundaries
What we are not
The Sidekicks we list are sitting. They do not run behavior plans, chart sessions, or hand out medications. Their professional work belongs at their day jobs, and we are explicit about that with every family. If a Sidekick ever represents a booking as anything else, tell us — we will handle it.
Idaho also has public programs that serve families who qualify — vouchered programs and the DD Waiver self-directed services. For families those programs fit, they are often the right answer. We are built for the gaps: the wedding, the date night, the Tuesday afternoon when an appointment lands on top of you.
A plain comparison in our guides →
If we are getting something wrong, tell us. The phone number is in the footer. We will pick up.
Find your first Sidekick.
Tell us about your kid. We'll match you with someone who already gets it.