How LDS Ward Leaders Can Ditch Paper Permission Slips for Good

It's the night before Girls Camp. You've been planning this for three months — transportation, meals, cabin assignments, the whole thing. And then you remember: you're still missing seven permission slips.

You text the Young Women's president. She texts the girls. Half the parents are already asleep. One mom sends a blurry photo of a handwritten form. Another says she'll drop it off in the morning. By the time you leave for camp, you've got a folder with a mix of complete forms, incomplete forms, and one that's clearly signed by a twelve-year-old pretending to be her dad.

If you've served in a youth calling for more than a few months, this scenario needs no explanation.

What the Church Actually Requires

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints requires a Permission and Medical Release Form for any activity involving an overnight stay, travel outside the local area, or higher-than-ordinary risk — per General Handbook section 20.5.5. This covers Girls Camp, Young Men's camp, Aaronic Priesthood camp, FSY (For the Strength of Youth conferences), trek, youth conferences, and any other activity that takes youth away from home.

The form itself is straightforward: youth information, emergency contacts, medical history, allergies, medications, and a parent or guardian signature. Every leader who coordinates these activities knows it well. The problem has never been the form — it's the collecting.

Why Paper Creates Problems

Paper permission slips fail in predictable ways:

They get lost. A form sent home in a backpack on Tuesday has a remarkable ability to disappear before Sunday. Leaders spend more time chasing forms than planning activities.

They're incomplete. Parents leave fields blank, skip the medical section, or forget to sign. You only discover this at 6 AM when the vans are loading.

They're inaccessible when you need them most. If a youth has a medical emergency at camp, you need that form immediately. If it's in a folder back at the meetinghouse, it does you no good.

They create unnecessary work. Someone has to collect them, check them, chase the missing ones, and physically bring them to the activity. For a ward doing multiple activities per month, this adds up fast.

Going Digital: How It Actually Works

A digital permission slip works exactly like the paper version — same fields, same parent signature, same information — but collected through a link instead of a piece of paper.

Here's what the process looks like in practice:

1. The activity leader sets up the form once, pre-filling the activity details (name, dates, location, ward)
2. Parents receive a link — by text, email, or the ward's communication channels — and fill it out on their phone in about two minutes
3. The leader sees completions in real time and can see at a glance who's submitted and who hasn't
4. All completed forms are available digitally during the activity, accessible from any device

No printing. No chasing. No illegible handwriting. No lost forms.

Simple Permission Slip for LDS Youth Activities

Simple Permission Slip is a free tool built specifically for this workflow. You upload your existing PDF permission slip — including the standard LDS Permission and Medical Release Form — configure which fields parents fill out and which the leader pre-fills, and share the link.

It works for every activity that requires the form: Girls Camp, Young Women's camp, Young Men's camp, Aaronic Priesthood camp, FSY, trek, service projects, youth conferences, and local overnight activities. Because the LDS church uses one canonical form for all these activities, you set it up once and reuse it throughout the year, updating only the activity details each time.

The free tier covers up to three active forms — more than enough for most ward callings. There's no app for parents to download; they fill it out directly in their browser.

Getting Started

If you have an upcoming activity that requires a permission slip, it takes about five minutes to set up:

1. Download the standard LDS Permission and Medical Release Form as a PDF (available at churchofjesuschrist.org or use the free template at simplepermissionslip.com/templates/lds-youth-permission-slip)
2. Upload it to Simple Permission Slip
3. Configure which fields are for parents and which you'll pre-fill as the leader
4. Share the link with parents through your ward's normal communication channels

Leaders who've made the switch say the biggest change isn't the time saved — it's the peace of mind before an activity knowing that every form is accounted for before anyone gets in a van.

Free template: Download the standard LDS Youth Permission and Medical Release Form at simplepermissionslip.com/templates/lds-youth-permission-slip. Covers Girls Camp, Young Men's camp, FSY, trek, and all other youth activities.