Candidate privacy notice
Who we are
Caring Feathers is a family-run provider of children's residential homes in London and Derby, registered with Ofsted. We are the "data controller" for the information you give us when you apply. Contact: m.d@caringfeathers.com, 07718 279795.
What we collect and why
| Information | Why we need it | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Name, email, phone, postcode | To contact you and to judge whether sleep-in shifts at our homes are realistic for you | Steps before entering an employment contract (UK GDPR Art. 6(1)(b)) |
| Right to work, age confirmation, driving licence | Legal requirements of the role | Legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)) |
| Qualifications, training, experience, your two written answers, your CV | To assess your suitability for the role | Steps before a contract |
| Full employment history with gaps explained, reasons for leaving, two referees | Required by Schedule 2 of the Children's Homes (England) Regulations 2015 before anyone works in a children's home | Legal obligation |
| Criminal record declaration and DBS details | The role is regulated activity with children and is exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 | Legal obligation; substantial public interest for criminal offence data (DPA 2018 Sch. 1, para 10 and para 18 safeguarding of children) |
| Equal opportunities answers (optional) | To check our recruitment is fair. Stored separately. Never shown to anyone making a decision about you | Substantial public interest, equality of opportunity (DPA 2018 Sch. 1 para 8) |
| Health information needed for adjustments | So your interview and job are accessible | Employment law obligations (Art. 9(2)(b)) |
How we use software to help us
We use a software tool, built for us and running on the Claude AI model, to read applications and produce a short summary for us: whether the essential requirements are met, how much relevant experience is shown, and what information is missing. It also drafts the emails we send you.
A person at Caring Feathers makes every decision. The tool does not reject anyone. Our Managing Director or a registered manager reads the summary and your application before deciding who to invite to interview and who to appoint. The tool is not shown your name, age, photo, equal opportunities answers or criminal record declaration when it summarises your suitability. We check the tool's summaries against our own judgement every month to make sure it is not treating any group unfairly.
You can ask us to explain any decision, ask for a decision to be looked at again by a different person, and tell us if you think the summary of your application was wrong. Email m.d@caringfeathers.com.
Who sees your information
- Our Managing Director and the registered manager of the home you may work in.
- Your referees, who receive your name and the role you applied for, and are asked about your work. We contact your current employer only after you have said we can, or after we make you an offer.
- The Disclosure and Barring Service, if we make you an offer.
- Ofsted, which may inspect our recruitment records.
- Our service providers who store or process data for us under contract: Supabase (database and file storage, hosted in the EU), Vercel (web hosting), Anthropic (the AI model that summarises applications; your data is not used to train it), and Google (email and calendar). We do not sell your information or share it with recruitment agencies or other employers.
How long we keep it
- If you are not successful: 6 months after we tell you, then deleted. If you ticked the talent pool box: 12 months, and we may tell you about similar roles.
- If you join us: your application becomes part of your staff file and is kept for the duration of your employment and for 6 years afterwards, as required for children's homes records.
- Equal opportunities answers are kept in anonymous form for statistics only.
Your rights
You can ask for a copy of your information, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it where we no longer need it, object to how we use it, and withdraw from the process at any time by emailing m.d@caringfeathers.com. We will reply within one month. If you are unhappy with how we handle your information you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.
Security
Your application is stored in an encrypted database with access limited to named staff who sign in with a password. CVs and documents are stored in private storage that is not accessible from the internet without signing in. We keep a log of who has viewed your record.