My answers are similar, our son has Type 1, he's 9 now, he's had it for 3 years...
Insurance coverage - type 1 diabetes is covered on the basic (compulsory) insurance, and you will pay a 10% gap for the kids meds, and for the adult you should choose a low deductible. They might knock you back for 'halbprivate' cover - which you pay extra for, and would typically include things like a private room in hospital...that's what happened to us...
We end up budgeting 50chf a month for 'extras' for our whole family. This is the gap on test strips, the clinics at the kinderspital every three months and the general paediatrician visits..
The Zurich Kinderspital seems to have a 'Roche' shop, but we use a blood glucose meter from Abbott and they have been very happy to provide us with a new pump twice since we got here (we always have two, and our son has lost one per year)...we email them with the tale of how it got lost, and they post us one within 24 hours - obviously it means we keep using their test strips!
For three diabetics in the family, I'd probably budget a bit more per month - maybe 100chf, for the gaps, so that you don't get caught out...
We see Prof. Dr. Schoenle at the Kinderspital, but that's because our specialist in Australia gave us his name, and the Paediatrician we saw managed to get us onto his list - normally he's not easy to get on the list for because he is actually the Professor ! - but I can recommend Dr Belvedere at Witikon (Paediatrician)- very organised and my biggest advice is to get a Paed who is open on Saturdays! - it's really bad to pull kids out of school to go to the doctor here!
I am quite sure you will be referred to the endocrinology clinic at the Kinderspital and I am yet to find a staff member there who doesn't speak English enough to refer you in the right direction - the diabetes staff have no problem communicating. Sometimes they can seem a little blunt, but it can simply be a translation issue. They will probably also get you to see a diabetes dietician at the hospital, and I'm quite sure they have psychologists etc if needed.
I recommend you join the diabetes association - you will get all the info in German, but they run a kids diabetes camp every year for a whole week in the summer and our son had an awesome time! - he was barely 7 when he went, the youngest kid on camp, and he came home self-injecting, we were very impressed! They taught him heaps about his meds, how to calculate, and also other 'hypo' food options that are 1 carb serve, and healthy too!
I'm guessing you'd also get a Retinologist through the hospital.
Blood work is done at your clinic days, you get the HBA1C on the spot (takes a few minutes) and we have also requested things like a coeliac screening blood test (our son has coeliac) and for them to do general blood tests at the clinic, and they were happy to do that (actually, the Paediatrician suggested doing it that way so only one lot of blood gets done and it's all via the hospital system)...
Meters we did have to change for Switzerland, but we came from Australia, so it's a different region. Try the website for your meter, see who the supplier is in Switzerland, and email or phone their help line and I'm sure they will answer your question. Of course, we hold onto our old meters and strips for when we travel!
School-wise that was the hardest part. You will have to set up a structure for your kids via the school. If meals are provided, you will have to educate someone on how to measure the meals (are your boys on pumps or injections?)
The other thing is that the endocrinologist you see may well want to change your regime. Professor Schoenle's team actually do the clinical testing on the insulins such as Levimir, and so he was quite adamant that the regime we had was flawed. We were more than happy to trust his judgement, and the results were impressive - our son is 10 times healthier here than he was when we left Australia - partly also because we decided not to get a car, and he gets a lot more exercise than he used to!
We decided at this stage to not pump, because our son isn't old enough to measure his dosages or handle the adjustments, and we didn't want to have to train the staff to do it - he's on a system where he has two insulins in the morning which cover breakfast and last until lunch time, and then he has one before dinner and one after to cover overnight. It works really well with regular meals, and the swiss mealtimes which are basically 6:30am breakfast, 9am snack, 11am snack, 12-1pm lunch, and 5-6pm dinner....
Feel free to PM me. And maybe our kids will meet at diabetes camp - for us it's the only break we get from his diabetes care too, all year, so it's a special time for our other kids to eat wherever/whenever/whatever for a whole week ! (and our son's german didn't improve much at camp because everyone wanted to practice their english on him instead!)...