Privacy Policy

Caring Minds Therapy (“CaringMinds”, “we”, “us”) provides child development, therapy support, family resources, and related services from Lagos, Nigeria. You can reach us at info@caringminds.ng or 0802 229 7137.

It applies when you use caringminds.ng, the CaringMinds mobile app, book a consultation, shop with us, apply as a contributor, or create a parent or therapist account. It sits alongside our Terms of Service and Disclaimer.

We aim to handle information in line with the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation (NDPR) and the Nigeria Data Protection Act. The lawful bases we rely on are delivering the care you asked for, and the consents you give us (including consent to process your child’s information).

Depending on how you use CaringMinds, we may hold:

• Account details — name, email, phone, username, role (parent, therapist, contributor, or staff), and sign-in data.
• Family and child information you choose to share — for example a child’s name, date of birth, notes, intake answers, and optional supporting documents. Care and development details are described below.
• Care messages between a parent and an assigned therapist in that child’s care thread.
• CaringMinds Support — a private in-app conversation between you (a parent or therapist) and the CaringMinds team. Each person has their own Support thread. Other families and therapists cannot see it. Authorized CaringMinds administrators can read it and reply from the admin dashboard. If you mention a child in that thread, staff who handle Support can see that text.
• Photos and files — profile pictures, therapist certificates, and documents a parent attaches during child onboarding.
• Public therapist listing — only what a therapist publishes (such as specialism, about text, and verified certifications).
• Shop, booking, and payment records — order and care-hour references, amounts, and status. Card details are handled by our payment processor (currently Paystack); we do not store full card numbers.
• Therapist payout details — bank name and account number a therapist saves so CaringMinds can send monthly earnings.
• Device tokens — if you allow push notifications, a token for that device so we can send service alerts.
• Consent records — which policies you accepted and when, including child-data consent before a child profile is added.

Depending on the services you use, CaringMinds may collect information relevant to your child’s development and care, including developmental concerns, assessment information, care goals, therapy-related information, progress observations, session information, recommendations, and other information you or an authorized professional provide.

We use this information to provide, coordinate, personalize, and improve the services requested by your family. We do not use this information to make automated diagnoses.

We use this information to:

• create and secure your account, and send sign-in or reset emails
• connect a family with an assigned therapist and keep care going after sessions
• schedule consultations, record care hours, and process family payments
• pay therapists their monthly earnings using the bank details they provide
• fulfil shop orders and contributor applications
• send service messages and push notifications you have allowed
• answer questions you send through CaringMinds Support and notify you when the team replies (the notification does not include the message text)
• meet professional, legal, and safeguarding obligations

We do not sell personal information. We do not use child care records for advertising.

A parent or caregiver must have the authority to share a child’s details with us. Before you add a child in the app, we ask you to confirm that CaringMinds may use that information to deliver care — to set up their profile, connect you with a therapist, and keep your family in the loop after sessions. Optional documents you upload are used only for that purpose.

We do not treat what you share as a diagnosis. Access is limited to people supporting that child: you (the family), therapists with an active assignment, and CaringMinds staff who need it to operate the service. When an assignment ends, that therapist can no longer open the child’s care record; past messages in that pair’s thread stay read-only.

Session notes can include a parent-visible summary and internal observations. Internal notes are not shown to parents.

We share information only when it is needed to run CaringMinds:

• assigned therapists, for the children they support
• authorized CaringMinds administrators, for CaringMinds Support conversations and for operating the service
• the service providers listed below, each limited to what they need to run their part of the service
• when the law requires it, or to protect a child or another person from serious harm

These are the processors that operate CaringMinds today. We do not sell your information to them. Care records stay in our hosted database (currently in the EU) unless a provider below needs a specific item to do its job (for example a payment reference or a push token).

• Supabase — database, sign-in, file storage (photos, certificates, and onboarding documents), and live updates in the app and on the website.
• Vercel — hosts caringminds.ng and runs scheduled jobs that support the service (for example session reminders).
• Paystack — card payments for consultations, care-hour deposits, and shop orders, and bank transfers for therapist payouts. We do not store full card numbers.
• Resend — transactional email, such as account confirmation, password reset, and service notices.
• Expo — builds and updates the CaringMinds app and delivers push notifications through the Expo Push Service when you allow notifications.
• Apple — on iPhone, push notifications go through Apple’s Push Notification service (APNs).
• Google — on Android, push notifications go through Firebase Cloud Messaging. The CaringMinds website also uses Google Analytics to understand site use. The mobile app does not include a Google Analytics or advertising SDK.

Care-thread messages are a conversation with an assigned therapist about that child’s care. They are not a social network and not an emergency line.

CaringMinds Support is a separate private thread with the CaringMinds team. We aim to respond within 24 hours during our usual hours. That is a response expectation, not a time limit: Support history is not deleted or closed after 24 hours. Support is not monitored around the clock and is not an emergency line.

If someone is in immediate danger, contact your nearest hospital or emergency services, or call us on 0802 229 7137 during Consultations: Mon-Sat, 9:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m..

We keep information only as long as we need it to deliver care, run payments, and meet legal duties. Exact periods will be set with CaringMinds’ legal adviser, based on Nigerian law (including NDPR and accounting rules) and how long the organisation needs the record to operate safely. Until those periods are published here, the schedule below is the rule we follow.

• Active account — kept while the account exists.
• Child care records — kept while care is active, then for a defined period after care ends.
• Payment records — kept as required by law and accounting.
• Messages — care-thread and CaringMinds Support messages are kept while the conversation is active, then for a defined period after it is no longer active. Support history stays with your account until that period ends; it does not expire after 24 hours.
• Closed child or account — identifying details are stripped as described below. Remaining records are kept or removed within a defined period.

When a parent deletes a child in the app, we close that child’s profile. The child leaves the family’s list and cannot be opened again. We remove identifying details from the profile — name, preferred name, parent note, and photo. Photos and onboarding files are removed from storage when the current app can do so. We do not erase the care record at that moment. Goals, session notes, hours, messages, assignments, and similar history may stay linked to that closed profile until the retention period for that class of record ends. This cannot be undone in the app.

When a parent or therapist deletes their account, we close the account, strip personal details from the profile, and stop them from signing in. Care, payment, and Support history connected to that account may be kept until the periods above end. You can email info@caringminds.ng to ask us to close an account or correct information.

Access to care data requires a signed-in account. Parents see only their family. Therapists see only assigned children. Each parent or therapist sees only their own CaringMinds Support thread. Authorized CaringMinds administrators can open Support threads in order to reply. Card payments are handled by Paystack.

You can update your profile in the app, manage notification preferences, and review the consents you accepted. A parent can close a child’s profile as described above. A parent or therapist can close their account. You may ask us for a copy of your information, to correct it, or to withdraw consent where we rely on consent — understanding that we may then be unable to keep delivering care for that child. A short list of these actions is on Privacy Choices.

If we update this policy, we will post the new text on this page and change the version date. Where the law requires a new consent, we will ask for it in the app.

Privacy questions: info@caringminds.ng or 0802 229 7137. Lagos, Nigeria.