Safety and Safeguarding

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

Version 1.0

Effective [Effective date]

In short

• In an emergency, call 911.
• During a stay, call the facility directly about the person's care.
• If you are worried someone is being harmed, tell us at support@respiteaway.com, or report it to the Retirement Homes Regulatory Authority (RHRA) at 1-855-275-7472. You can do both.
• The law requires us to report suspected harm, abuse, neglect, unlawful conduct, or misuse of a resident's money to the RHRA Registrar. We do.
• RespiteAway does not provide or supervise care, and we are not an emergency service.

1. In an emergency

• If someone is in danger or needs urgent medical help, call 911.
• During a stay, call the facility directly about the person's care. The facility's phone number is on your confirmed booking.
• For health advice that is not an emergency, call Health811 by dialing 8-1-1.
• Our team is not available around the clock. We answer email and messages every day from 8:00 to 22:00 Eastern time, not overnight. Do not use RespiteAway messages or email for an emergency.

2. What RespiteAway does for safety

• We check every facility's licence. Before a facility can take bookings, a person on our team checks that its licence shows "Issued" on the RHRA public register. The listing shows a "Licence checked" badge with the date. If the licence lapses, we pause the listing. Our page What "Licence checked" Means explains exactly what this check covers.
• The facility sees the care needs you enter before it says yes, so it can decide whether it can meet them. If a facility has told us it cannot meet a need you entered, it cannot accept the request.
• We keep a record of each booking and its terms.
• Your confirmed booking shows the facility's phone number, and a reminder to call 911 in an emergency.
• Anyone can report a review or a listing. A person on our team looks at every report.
• We act on concerns. That includes reporting to the RHRA when the law requires it (section 6), and pausing a listing (section 9).

3. What RespiteAway does not do

• We do not provide, supervise or direct care.
• We do not employ or check facility staff.
• We do not inspect facilities.
• We do not assess the person you are booking for. The facility does that.
• We do not monitor stays while they happen.
• We are not an emergency service.
• We do not investigate whether harm happened. The RHRA, the police and other public bodies do that.

4. The facility's responsibilities

Licensed retirement homes have duties under Ontario's Retirement Homes Act, 2010. These include assessing the people who stay with them, planning their care, having a process for complaints, and reporting suspected harm to the RHRA.

Before a stay, ask the facility how it handles concerns and complaints, and who to call at any hour.

5. How to raise a concern about a stay

If someone is in danger now, call 911.

Talk to the facility. Ask for the manager. You can skip this step if talking to the facility could put anyone at risk.

Tell us. Email support@respiteaway.com with "Safety concern" in the subject line, or reply to your booking confirmation email. If you can, include:

• your booking number
• what happened, when, and who was involved
• whether anyone is in danger now
• whether you have told the facility or the RHRA

What we do:

• We confirm that we received your concern within one business day.
• A member of our team trained to handle safety concerns reviews it.
• We may contact you, and the facility, for more information.
• If the law requires a report, we make it (section 6).

Report to the RHRA yourself. You do not need to contact us first.

• Phone: 1-855-275-7472 (1-855-ASK-RHRA)
• Online: use the mandatory report form on the RHRA website, rhra.ca
• Anyone who sees or suspects harm, or a risk of harm, to a resident can report it. Reports can be anonymous.

6. Our duty to report to the RHRA

Ontario's Retirement Homes Act, 2010, section 75(1), says that a person who has reasonable grounds to suspect that any of the following has occurred or may occur must immediately report the suspicion, and the information it is based on, to the RHRA Registrar:

• improper or incompetent treatment or care of a resident that resulted in harm or a risk of harm to the resident
• abuse of a resident by anyone, or neglect of a resident by the home's licensee or staff, that resulted in harm or a risk of harm to the resident
• unlawful conduct that resulted in harm or a risk of harm to a resident
• misuse or misappropriation of a resident's money

This duty applies to everyone, including RespiteAway's team.

What we do

• When anyone on our team has reasonable grounds to suspect any of these, we report it to the RHRA Registrar immediately.
• We do not wait to investigate first. We do not need anyone's agreement to report.
• The report includes the suspicion and the information it is based on. That can include personal information, including health information, about you, the person you booked for, and facility staff. The law requires this report, and privacy law allows a disclosure the law requires.
• We tell you when we have made a report about something you told us, unless telling you could put someone at risk, or the RHRA asks us not to.
• We keep a record of every concern we receive, and of each decision to report or not, with the reason.

What we do not do

• We never discourage anyone from reporting to the RHRA.
• We do not decide whether harm happened.

Ontario's Retirement Homes Act protects people who report to the RHRA from retaliation.

7. Other help in Ontario

8. Safety and your privacy

• When you tell us about a concern, we use what you tell us to respond to it.
• We share it with the facility only as much as we need to keep the person safe or to address the concern. We do not tell the facility who raised the concern, and we do not share our report to the RHRA with the facility.
• We share it with the RHRA when the law requires (section 6). We share it with the police or emergency services when someone's life, health or safety is at immediate risk.
• Our Privacy Policy explains how long we keep this information. Questions about privacy go to our Privacy Officer at privacy@respiteaway.com.

9. When we pause or remove a facility's listing

We may pause a listing right away when:

• we receive a credible concern about someone's safety at the facility
• the facility's licence no longer shows "Issued" on the RHRA register, or has lapsed
• someone may be pretending to be the facility
• the facility repeatedly fails to honour the terms recorded on bookings

What a pause means

• The listing no longer appears in search. It cannot receive or accept requests.
• Requests waiting for an answer are declined, and we tell each family.
• A person on our team contacts every family with a confirmed upcoming stay at that facility within one business day. We tell them the listing is paused, and help them decide what to do, including looking for another place. We may not be able to share the reason.

Fairness to the facility

• We give the facility our reasons in writing, and a chance to respond. We may wait if telling the facility could put someone at risk or interfere with an investigation.
• We restore a listing only after the reason for the pause is resolved.
• If the problem is serious or is not resolved, we remove the listing.
• We do not publish the reasons for a pause.

10. Payment scams

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 RHRA public register to confirm the request is real. If you are asked to pay in an unusual way, such as gift cards or a transfer to a personal account, stop and tell us at support@respiteaway.com.

11. Changes and contact

We may update this page. If we make a material change, we email account holders at least 30 days before it takes effect, unless a change is needed sooner to protect someone's safety.

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