Community and Reviews Guidelines

[Legal entity name] ("RespiteAway", "we", "us")

Version 1.0

Effective [Effective date]

In short

• Treat everyone fairly. No one may be refused or treated worse because of race, disability, age, religion or any other ground protected by Ontario's Human Rights Code.
• Only the family who booked a stay through RespiteAway, and completed it, can review it. One review per stay.
• Reviews must be honest and your own. No paid, fake or pressured reviews.
• Do not share anyone's health details in a review, including the person you booked for.
• A facility can reply once, in public. A reply must not confirm who stayed or mention anyone's health.
• Anyone signed in can report a review. A person on our team looks at every report.
• Messages are for arranging the booking. Be respectful. Our team can read them.

These guidelines are part of our Terms of Use. This summary is a guide. The numbered sections below are the guidelines.

1. Who these guidelines apply to

They apply to everyone who uses RespiteAway: families, facility owners and staff, and anyone who reports content. They cover reviews, facility replies, booking messages, and how people treat each other through RespiteAway.

2. Treating everyone fairly

2.1 Our commitment

Everyone who uses RespiteAway agrees to treat others with respect and without discrimination.

Ontario's Human Rights Code protects people from discrimination because of race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, creed, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, family status and disability, and other grounds the Code sets out. These guidelines use "protected ground" to mean any of them.

2.2 What facilities may do

• Decline a request when they cannot safely meet the person's care needs within their licence, staff and building.
• Ask the questions they need to understand the person's care needs.
• Offer stays only to people aged 65 or older. The Code allows this.
• Run a program the Code permits, such as a special program for a disadvantaged group.

2.3 What facilities may not do

• Decline, delay, or charge more because of a protected ground.
• Decline because of a stereotype about a condition or disability, instead of the person's actual needs. When a need relates to a disability, the facility must consider whether it can meet it without undue hardship.
• Ask about religion, ethnic origin, sexual orientation or another protected ground when it does not bear on care.
• Treat a family differently because of who is making the booking.

When a facility declines a request, its note to the family should give a care-related reason.

2.4 What families may not do

• Harass, insult or threaten facility staff, for any reason.
• Ask a facility to assign or exclude staff because of a protected ground.
• Post reviews or messages that attack anyone because of a protected ground.

2.5 If you think you were treated unfairly

Tell us at support@respiteaway.com. A person on our team will review what happened. We may ask the facility for its reason. If a facility has broken this commitment, we may pause or remove its listing.

You can also contact the Human Rights Legal Support Centre (hrlsc.on.ca) or apply to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario. Using our process does not affect those rights.

3. Messages

3.1 What messages are for

Each booking has a message thread between the family and the facility. Use it to arrange the stay: dates, arrival, what to bring, and questions about care.

• Messages are not for emergencies. In an emergency, call 911. During a stay, call the facility directly.
• We read messages every day from 8:00 to 22:00 Eastern time, not overnight.
• Messages are part of the booking record. You cannot edit or delete a message after you send it. Our Privacy Policy says how long we keep messages and how long the facility can see them.

3.2 Who can read your messages

• The facility's owners and administrators on RespiteAway.
• RespiteAway's team. We read messages when we need to: to help with a booking, handle a dispute or a safety concern, or prevent fraud. We sometimes write in a thread. Our messages are marked as from RespiteAway.
• When you send a message, the other side gets an alert by email and in the app.

3.3 Message rules

• Be respectful. No harassment, threats, slurs or sexual content.
• Share only the health information the facility needs to arrange the stay.
• Do not share information about other residents.
• Do not use messages to advertise, to recruit staff, or to move a booking off RespiteAway.

3.4 Payment safety

RespiteAway never asks families for payment. Before you send a deposit or any payment to a facility, call the facility at the phone number on its record in the Retirement Homes Regulatory Authority (RHRA) public register, and confirm the request is real. Tell us right away if a message asks you to pay in an unusual way, such as gift cards or a transfer to a personal account.

3.5 Reporting a message

Email support@respiteaway.com with your booking number and what the problem is.

4. Reviews

4.1 Who can write a review

• Only the account holder who made the booking.
• Only after the stay is marked complete. This happens the day after checkout, or earlier if the facility marks the stay complete.
• One review per booking.
• Not for a stay that was cancelled, declined or never happened, or a booking that ended as a no-show (the guest did not arrive).
• Not by facility owners or staff, their families, or anyone with a business connection to the facility or to a competitor.

The person who stayed can write the review with you, through your account, in your words or theirs.

4.2 How reviews are requested

• We send the same review request to every family after every completed stay, unless they have turned off review requests. We do not choose who to ask based on how the stay went.
• We do not pay for reviews. We do not offer anything in return for a review.
• Facilities may invite every guest to leave a review, in neutral words. They may not ask only the guests they expect to be happy. They may not offer a discount, refund, gift or anything else for a review, or for changing or removing one.

4.3 What a review shows

• An overall rating from 1 to 5 stars, and your written review if you add one (up to 4,000 characters).
• Your first name and last initial, or "Caregiver" if you post anonymously. See section 4.10.
• The date, and a "Completed stay" label. The label means the review is linked to a stay booked and completed through RespiteAway.
• The facility's reply, if it posts one.

A facility's rating is the plain average of its published reviews. Reviews are shown newest first. No one can pay to change a rating, the order of reviews, or which reviews appear.

4.4 What we welcome

Your honest experience of the stay, whether good, mixed or bad. For example:

• how the facility communicated before and during the stay
• the room, meals, cleanliness and activities
• how staff treated the person you booked for, described without health details
• how arrival and departure went
• whether the stay matched the listing and the price

4.5 What is not allowed

We remove a review that does any of the following. We do not edit your words. If only part of a review breaks a rule, we tell you which part, and you can post the review again without it.

1. Shares health information about anyone, including the person you booked for. Describe the help they needed in general terms, without diagnoses, medications or medical events.
2. Shares information about other residents, or details that could identify them.
3. Names staff by their full name, or includes anyone's phone number, email or address. First names are fine.
4. Is not about a real stay booked through RespiteAway, or is about a different facility.
5. Is fake or misleading, including a review by an owner, staff member, their family, or a competitor.
6. Was paid for, rewarded or pressured by anyone.
7. Is used as a threat, such as "refund me or I will post this".
8. Contains hate, harassment, threats or sexual content, or attacks someone because of a protected ground.
9. Is advertising or spam, or links to other services.
10. Breaks the law or a court order.

4.6 What is not a reason to remove a review

We do not remove a review only because:

• it is negative, or has a low rating
• the facility disagrees with it
• it criticizes the price, the food or the communication
• it gives a personal opinion
• the facility has replied to it

4.7 Reviews that describe harm, abuse or neglect

If you believe someone was harmed or put at risk at a facility, please do not rely on a review to raise it.

• If someone is in danger, call 911.
• Tell us through our Safety and Safeguarding page. We may be required by law to report it to the RHRA. You can also report it to the RHRA yourself at 1-855-275-7472.

When a review alleges abuse, neglect or a crime:

• We hold the review, and a person on our team looks at it before it is published.
• We do not decide whether the allegation is true. We check the review against these guidelines.
• If the review cannot be published as written, we tell you why, and you can post the parts about the stay again without the allegation.
• We handle the safety concern separately, as our Safety and Safeguarding page describes.

4.8 Fake, paid and pressured reviews

Canada's Competition Act treats fake and misleading reviews as misleading advertising. A business can be responsible for reviews it writes, or allows others to write.

• If we find reviews that break sections 4.1, 4.2 or 4.5, we remove them.
• If a facility is responsible, we may also pause or remove its listing.

4.9 No one may stop you from reviewing

• A facility may not ask you to agree, in a residency agreement or anywhere else, not to review it.
• A facility may not make a refund, or any other help, depend on you removing or changing a review.

4.10 Anonymous reviews

If you choose "Post anonymously", your review shows "Caregiver" instead of your name. Anonymous has limits:

• The facility knows who stayed. It may be able to tell who wrote a review from its date and details.
• Our team can see who wrote every review.

4.11 Removing your own review

You can ask us to remove your review at any time by emailing support@respiteaway.com. Removal is final for that stay.

4.12 Facility replies

A facility owner or administrator can post one public reply to each review. Facilities agree to these rules for replies:

• Do not confirm that a particular person stayed, and do not say anything that could identify them. Retirement homes are health information custodians under Ontario's Personal Health Information Protection Act. Confirming that someone was a resident, or describing their care, can be a disclosure of their personal health information.
• Do not mention anyone's health, care or behaviour, even if the reviewer did.
• Do not argue about someone's care in public. Offer to talk directly instead.
• Do not threaten, insult or retaliate against the reviewer.
• Keep it short and courteous.

A reply that follows these rules might read:

Thank you for taking the time to share this. We take every comment seriously and would like to talk with you directly. Please call our manager at the number on our listing.

We may remove a reply that breaks these rules. To report a reply, use "Report this review" and say the problem is with the reply.

4.13 How we moderate

• Reviews are published when they are submitted, except as section 4.7 describes.
• Anyone signed in can report a review with "Report this review". You need to give a reason.
• A person on our team looks at every report within 5 business days.
• We then leave the review up, or remove it. We do not edit your words. If we remove a review because of one part, we tell you, and you can post it again without that part.
• We tell the person who wrote the review, and the person who reported it, what we decided and why.
• A removed review no longer counts toward the facility's rating.
• We keep a record of every removal and restoration, with the reason.

4.14 Appeals

If you disagree with a decision about your review, your reply or your report, email support@respiteaway.com within 30 days. Tell us why.

• Where we can, a different person on our team looks at it again.
• We answer within 10 business days.
• That decision is final on our side. It does not affect your legal rights.

4.15 Legal notices and court orders

If you believe a review is defamatory or unlawful, email hello@respiteaway.com with a link to the review, what is wrong with it, and why. We review legal notices against these guidelines and the law. We follow valid court orders.

5. How to report something

6. What we may do when these guidelines are broken

We choose a step that fits what happened. We may:

• remove a review, a reply or other content
• warn the account holder
• limit what an account can do, such as messaging or reviewing
• pause or close an account
• pause or remove a facility's listing

We tell the person why, unless that would put someone at risk or break the law. We act right away when safety, fraud or the law requires it. Anyone can ask us to look again, as section 4.14 describes.

7. Changes and contact

We may update these guidelines. If we make a material change, we email account holders at least 30 days before it takes effect.

• Reports and help: support@respiteaway.com, answered every day from 8:00 to 22:00 Eastern time, not overnight
• General questions: hello@respiteaway.com
• Emergencies: call 911
• By mail: [Legal entity name], [Business address]