Privacy Policy

Direct Caregiving Privacy Policy

Last Updated: July 30, 2025

1. Introduction: Your Privacy Matters to Us

At Direct Caregiving, we understand that your personal information is incredibly important. This Privacy Policy explains how Direct Caregiving (“we,” “us,” or “our”) collects, uses, stores, and protects your personal data when you engage our caregiving services. We are committed to safeguarding your privacy and ensuring transparency in how we handle your information.

Please take a moment to read this policy carefully. It outlines your rights regarding your personal data and how we comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018, as our operations are based in London, UK, and governed by the laws of England and Wales.

2. Who We Are

Direct Caregiving is a provider of professional and compassionate caregiving services in London, UK. Our mission is to support your well-being and independence in your home, offering a range of services including companionship, personal care, nursing care, domiciliary care, housekeeping, and more.

3. The Information We Collect About You

To provide you with the best possible care, we need to collect certain personal data. This information helps us understand your needs and deliver tailored services. We may collect, use, store, and transfer different kinds of personal data about you, which we have grouped together as follows:

• Identity Data: Includes your first name, last name, title, date of birth, and gender.
• Contact Data: Includes your home address, email address, and telephone numbers.
• Health and Care Needs Data (Special Category Data): This is sensitive information and includes details about your physical and mental health, medical history, medications, care requirements, and any disabilities or specific conditions relevant to your care plan.
• Financial Data: Includes bank account details and payment card details necessary for billing and payment processing.
• Service Data: Details about the services you have received from us.
• Technical Data: Includes internet protocol (IP) address, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, and other technology on the devices you use to access our website.
• Usage Data: Information about how you use our website and services.
• Marketing and Communications Data: Includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and your communication preferences.

4. How We Collect Your Personal Data

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

• Direct Interactions: You may give us your Identity, Contact, Health and Care Needs, and Financial Data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email, or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide when you:
  • Enquire about or apply for our services.
  • Enter into a Care Plan Agreement with us.
  • Provide feedback or make a complaint.
• Automated Technologies or Interactions: As you interact with our website, we may automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions, and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies and other similar technologies. Please see our Cookie Policy for more details.
• Third Parties or Publicly Available Sources: We may receive personal data about you from various third parties and public sources, such as:
  • Healthcare professionals (e.g., doctors, nurses, therapists) with your consent.
  • Family members or authorized representatives.
  • Local authorities or social services.
  • Technical Data from analytics providers like Google.

5. How We Use Your Personal 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 Provide Care Services: To assess your needs, develop and implement your personalized Care Plan Agreement, and deliver the agreed-upon care and housekeeping services.
• To Manage Our Relationship: To manage payments, fees, and charges, and to collect and recover money owed to us.
• For Communication: To communicate with you about your care plan, appointments, updates, and any concerns.
• For Safety and Quality: To ensure the safety and well-being of our clients and caregivers, and to monitor and improve the quality of our services.
• To Comply with Legal Obligations: To meet our legal, regulatory, and professional obligations, including safeguarding duties.
• For Internal Operations: For internal administration, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting, and hosting of data.
• For Marketing: To send you information about our services that may be of interest to you, where you have given consent or where we have a legitimate interest to do so. You can opt out at any time.

6. Lawful Basis for Processing Your Personal Data

Under GDPR, we must have a lawful basis to process your personal data. We rely on the following legal bases:

• Performance of a Contract: Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you (e.g., providing care services as per your Care Plan).
• Legal Obligation: Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation (e.g., health and safety regulations, safeguarding duties).
• Vital Interests: Where it is necessary to protect your vital interests (or those of another person) in an emergency.
• Legitimate Interests: Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests (e.g., improving our services, preventing fraud).
• Consent: In specific situations, we may ask for your explicit consent to process certain types of personal data, especially for sensitive data like health information, where other lawful bases don’t apply. You have the right to withdraw consent at any time.

7. Sharing Your Personal Data

We may share your personal data with trusted third parties for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy. These may include:

• Our Caregivers and Staff: To enable them to provide your care services effectively and safely.
• Healthcare Professionals: With your consent, we may share relevant health information with your doctors, nurses, therapists, or other healthcare providers involved in your care.
• Local Authorities/Social Services: Where there is a legal or safeguarding obligation to do so.
• Service Providers: Third-party service providers who assist us in our operations, such as IT support, payment processors, and professional advisors (e.g., legal, accounting). These providers are contractually bound to protect your data and only use it for specified purposes.
• Regulatory Bodies: As required by law or regulation.
• Emergency Services: In case of an emergency, to ensure your safety.

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

8. Data Security

We have implemented appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used, or accessed in an unauthorized 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. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have procedures in place to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

9. Data Retention

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

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorized use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

10. Your Legal Rights

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

• Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
• Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
• Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us to continue processing it.
• Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts your fundamental rights and freedoms.
• Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios: (a) if you want us to establish the data’s accuracy; (b) where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (c) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or (d) you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
• Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format.
• Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent.

If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please contact us using the details provided in Section 12.

11. Cookies and How We Use Them

Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our site. For detailed information on the cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them, please see our dedicated Cookie Policy.

12. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or for other operational, legal, or regulatory reasons. Any changes will be effective immediately upon posting the revised policy on our website. We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy periodically to stay informed about how we are protecting your information.

13. Contact Information and Complaints

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, our data practices, or if you wish to exercise any of your legal rights, please contact us at:

Direct Caregiving Direct Caregiving LTD London, UK Phone Number 0800 772 0931 info@directcaregiving.co.uk      https://directcaregiving.co.uk/

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO, so please contact us in the first instance.

Thank you for trusting Direct Caregiving with your personal information.