Privacy Policy

At Care Opt, your privacy is our priority. This policy explains how we collect, use, and protect your personal data when you use our platform.

1. Introduction

Care Opt is a trading name of Agency Care Staff Ltd (“Care Opt”, “we”, “us”, or “our”). We are committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal data. This policy describes our practices in connection with information that we collect through our website and applications.

2. Data Controller

Agency Care Staff Ltd is the data controller responsible for your personal data. If you have any questions about this privacy policy or our privacy practices, please contact us:

3. The Data We Collect

We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together as follows:

• Identity Data: includes first name, last name, username or similar identifier, and title. For Support Workers, this includes proof of identity and right to work documents.
• Contact Data: includes billing address, delivery address, email address and telephone numbers.
• Financial Data: includes bank account and payment card details (processed securely via Stripe).
• Transaction Data: includes details about payments to and from you and other details of services you have purchased or provided through the platform.
• Technical Data: includes internet protocol (IP) address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, and device information.
• Profile Data: includes your username and password, bookings made by you, your interests, preferences, feedback and survey responses.
• Special Category Data: For Clients, this may include health information and care requirements necessary to match you with a Support Worker.

4. How Your Data is Collected

We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:

• Direct interactions: You may give us your Identity, Contact and Financial Data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise.
• Automated technologies: As you interact with our website, we will automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns.
• Third parties: We may receive personal data about you from various third parties, such as analytics providers (Google), and payment processors (Stripe).

5. How We Use Your Data

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

• To register you as a new user.
• To facilitate the matching process between Clients and Support Workers.
• To manage and process bookings and payments.
• To manage our relationship with you (e.g., notifying you about changes to our terms).
• To enable you to partake in a review or survey.
• To administer and protect our business and this platform.

6. Data Sharing

We share limited personal data between Clients and Support Workers to facilitate the provision of care services. For example, once a booking is confirmed, a Support Worker will receive the Client's address and care requirements.

We also share data with third-party service providers who perform services for us, such as Stripe for payment processing and Google for platform analytics. We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law.

7. Data Security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know.

8. Data Retention

We will only retain your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements.

9. Your Legal Rights

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data, including the right to:

• Request access to your personal data.
• Request correction of your personal data.
• Request erasure of your personal data.
• Object to processing of your personal data.
• Request restriction of processing your personal data.
• Request transfer of your personal data.
• Right to withdraw consent.

10. Cookies

You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this platform may become inaccessible or not function properly.