How we look after your information

Who we are

Muzaana Care Services Ltd is a home care provider registered in England and Wales under company number 10775161, with its registered office at Suite 210, Legacy Centre, Hanworth Trading Estate, Hampton Road West, Feltham, Middlesex, TW13 6DH.

We are the data controller for the personal information described in this policy. That means we decide what information is collected, why it is collected and how it is used, and we are answerable for it.

We are registered with the Care Quality Commission, which regulates and inspects health and social care services in England. Some of the information we hold, and some of the sharing described below, exists because we are a regulated care provider.

What we collect and why

We only ask for information we actually need. Most of what we hold about you is information you have given us yourself, in a telephone call, in an email or through an enquiry on this website.

Giving us your information is voluntary. You are not obliged to provide any of it — but if you leave out something we need, such as a way to contact you or the area where care is needed, we may not be able to answer your enquiry.

Health and other sensitive information

Information about someone’s health, disability, ethnicity, religion or beliefs is treated as a special category of personal data and given extra protection under UK data protection law. Arranging home care usually involves some of it.

Where we process that information we rely on Article 9(2)(h) of the UK GDPR — processing necessary for the provision of health or social care and for the management of a care service — together with the corresponding condition in Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018. Everyone at Muzaana who handles it is under a duty of confidence.

Please do not send medical records, assessments, care plans or other detailed health information to our general email address before speaking to us. Email is not a secure channel. Call us first and we will explain what is actually needed and how to send it safely.

The Request Care form on this website

The Request Care page sets out the questions we would ask on a first telephone call, so you can think them through before you speak to anyone.

When you send the form, what you have typed is emailed to Muzaana Care Services by a small script running on this website’s own server. It is not passed to a third-party form service, so it does not travel to anyone beyond our website hosting provider, Hostinger, and the provider of our email, both of whom act only on our instructions under a written contract. Nothing you type is stored in a database on the website: the record of your enquiry is the email in our mailbox, kept for the period set out under “How long we keep information”.

You are told plainly whether it worked. If the message cannot be sent for any reason, the page that follows says so and gives you our telephone number; you will never be shown a confirmation for an enquiry that did not reach us.

To stop automated abuse of the form, the script briefly keeps a one-way scrambled version of the requesting IP address so it can count how many submissions have come from the same place within the hour. It cannot be turned back into an address, it is not linked to your enquiry, and it is deleted automatically.

So until then, an enquiry reaches us only when you telephone us or email us, and the information we then hold is whatever you chose to tell us.

Information collected automatically

This website sets no cookies of its own, uses no advertising or analytics services, and does not track you between websites. There is no visitor counter, no tag manager and no marketing pixel on any page.

Two things still happen automatically, as they do on any website. Our hosting provider records standard server logs when a page is requested, which include the requesting IP address, the page requested, the time and the browser identification; these are used to keep the site running and to investigate abuse. And the Care Quality Commission’s ratings widget, which appears on our CQC pages, is loaded directly from the CQC’s own servers, so the CQC receives the IP address of anyone viewing a page that carries it.

A small amount of information is also stored inside your own browser so the site behaves sensibly — whether you have dismissed a prompt, for example. It never leaves your device and we cannot read it.

Read the full cookie and browser storage policy

Who we share information with

We do not sell personal information, we do not rent it, and we do not pass it to anyone for their own marketing. We share it only where there is a reason to, and only as much as that reason requires.

Depending on the circumstances, that may include:

• The people directly involved in someone’s care, where they have agreed to it — a relative, an advocate, or someone holding a lasting power of attorney.
• Health and social care professionals involved in the person’s care, such as a GP, a district nursing team, a hospital discharge team or a local authority social work team.
• The Care Quality Commission and local authorities, in connection with the regulation, commissioning or safeguarding of care.
• Emergency services, where someone’s life or safety is at risk.
• Suppliers who process information on our behalf under a written contract — for example our website hosting provider and our IT and email providers. They may only act on our instructions and may not use the information for their own purposes.
• Our professional advisers, insurers and regulators, where we need advice or are required to account for what we have done.
• Anyone we are required to share with by law, or by a court order.

Where information is shared for safeguarding reasons, we may not always be able to ask for consent first — protecting an adult at risk of abuse or neglect can require us to act without it.

Where your information is held

We aim to keep personal information within the United Kingdom. Some of the everyday services we rely on, such as email and file storage, may store or process information outside the UK.

Where that happens we make sure the transfer is covered by one of the protections UK data protection law allows — an adequacy decision by the UK government, or a contract on the terms the law requires, such as the International Data Transfer Agreement. You can ask us which arrangement applies to a particular service and we will tell you.

How long we keep it

We keep personal information for as long as we need it for the purpose we collected it, and then dispose of it securely.

Care records

Records about care we have provided are retained in line with the Records Management Code of Practice for Health and Social Care, which sets minimum retention periods for adult social care records.

Enquiries that do not become care

Kept while we are corresponding with you and for a short period afterwards, so that we can pick the conversation up if you come back to us. We will tell you the period we currently apply if you ask.

Recruitment records

Kept for the recruitment process, and afterwards only where we are required or permitted to keep them — for example records relating to pre-employment checks.

Server logs

Kept for the short period our hosting provider retains them for security and reliability purposes.

Keeping information safe

We take appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal information against loss, misuse and unauthorised access. That includes limiting access to the people who need it, training our staff, and keeping our systems and devices up to date.

This website is served over an encrypted connection and hosts all of its own fonts and images, so viewing a page does not hand your details to an advertising network. No transmission over the internet can be guaranteed completely secure, which is the reason for the warning above about sending health information by email.

If a breach of personal data occurs that is likely to risk your rights and freedoms, we will report it to the Information Commissioner’s Office within the time the law allows and will tell you where we are required to.

Your rights over your information

UK data protection law gives you rights over the personal information we hold about you. You can exercise any of them by contacting us, and doing so is free. We will respond within one month, and will tell you within that month if a complex request needs longer.

The right to be informed

To be told what we do with your information — which is what this policy is for.

The right of access

To ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, and to be told why we hold it and who we have shared it with.

The right to rectification

To have information corrected if it is wrong, or completed if it is incomplete. Please tell us as soon as anything changes.

The right to erasure

To ask us to delete information. This is not absolute: where we are required by law to keep a care record, or need the information to defend a legal claim, we may have to keep it and will explain why.

The right to restrict processing

To ask us to pause what we do with information — for example while a dispute about its accuracy is resolved.

The right to object

To object to processing we carry out on the basis of our legitimate interests. If you object to marketing we will stop, without exception.

The right to data portability

To receive information you gave us in a commonly used electronic format, or to have it sent to another organisation, where the right applies.

The right to withdraw consent

Where we rely on your consent, you can withdraw it at any time. Withdrawing it does not affect anything done beforehand.

You can ask on behalf of somebody else if you have the authority to do so — for example as an attorney, a deputy, or with the person’s agreement. We may need to establish that authority before we release information about them.

To make a request, contact us on 020 8153 3774 or email info@muzaanacareservices.com. It helps if you tell us what you are looking for, but you do not have to explain why.

If care begins

This policy covers the website and the enquiries that come through it. Once care begins we hold considerably more — assessments, a care plan, daily notes, records of medicines given, and contact with health and social care professionals.

Anyone starting care with us, and anyone acting for them, will be given a separate and fuller privacy notice covering those records: what is kept, who can see it, how long it is held and how to ask for a copy. You can ask us for that notice at any time, including before care starts.

If you are unhappy with how we have used your information

Please tell us first. Most concerns can be sorted out quickly once we understand them, and we would rather hear about a problem than have you go elsewhere with it.

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK’s independent regulator for data protection. You do not have to come to us first, and complaining to the ICO costs nothing.

Make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office

How to complain to Muzaana about your care

Automated decisions and profiling

We do not make decisions about you by automated means, and we do not profile you. Every decision about whether we can provide care, and what that care looks like, is made by a person.

Changes to this policy

We review this policy regularly and update it when what we do changes. The date it was last reviewed is shown at the top of the page.

If we make a change that materially affects how we use information we already hold about you, we will take reasonable steps to tell you rather than relying on you noticing a new date.