Privacy Policy
Effective September 16, 2026 · Last updated September 16, 2026
This policy explains what GRACEful CheckIns collects, why, who sees it, and how long we keep it — for visitors to this website, and for the residents, families, and staff whose information we process when a care community uses GRACE.
- Who we are and our role
- Information we collect
- How we use information
- What we do not do
- How we share information
- Health-related and sensitive information
- Call recording and consent
- How long we keep information
- Security
- Your choices and rights
- California residents
- Do Not Track and third-party tracking
- Children
- Changes to this policy
- How to contact us
1. Who we are and our role
kAIndness LLC is a California limited liability company. We operate the website at gracefulcheckins.com and the GRACE voice check-in service. This policy covers two different groups of people, because our obligations to them are different.
Visitors to this website. If you read these pages or email us about GRACE, we decide how your information is used, and this policy governs it directly.
Residents, families, and staff at a care community. When a senior-living or care community (a “Community”) engages GRACE, we process resident, family, and staff information on that Community’s behalf and under our written contract with it. In that relationship we act as a service provider, and, where the Community is a HIPAA covered entity, as its business associate. The Community decides what GRACE is used for; we carry out those instructions. The Community’s own privacy notices also apply to you, and where this policy and that contract differ, the contract governs what we may do with the Community’s data.
2. Information we collect
| Category | Examples | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Contact and identifiers | Name, email address, phone number, job title, community name | You, when you write to us; the Community, for residents, families, and staff |
| Resident profile | Preferred name, room, phone number, call schedule, language, interests and conversation topics, authorized family contacts | The Community; family members with authority; the resident |
| Call audio | The recording of a scheduled GRACE check-in call | The call itself |
| Call transcript | The text of what was said during the call | Generated from the call audio |
| Wellbeing signals | Whether the check-in happened, general mood and engagement impressions, mentions of sleep or appetite, requests for staff | Generated by GRACE from the call |
| Health-related information | Mentions of pain, falls, dizziness, or distress, used to raise an escalation alert | Generated from the call |
| Messages | Notes a family member asks GRACE to read aloud; messages a resident asks GRACE to pass on | Family members; residents |
| Account and audit data | Staff and family sign-ins, actions taken on alerts, audit logs | Our platform |
| Website technical data | IP address, browser type, pages requested, time of request | Your browser, through our hosting and content-delivery provider and our font provider |
3. How we use information
- To place scheduled calls and hold check-in conversations with residents
- To produce check-in confirmations, wellbeing signals, and escalation alerts for Community staff
- To share check-in status, general wellbeing, and messages with family members, only as the resident permits
- To keep audit logs, secure the service, and investigate misuse or a reported problem with a call
- To respond to inquiries and manage our relationship with a Community
- To improve the service, using de-identified information only, and only where the Community’s contract permits it (see section 4)
- To comply with law and with our contractual obligations
4. What we do not do
- We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.
- We do not use conversation content for advertising, ever.
- We do not train or tune our AI models on identifiable resident conversations. Where a Community’s contract permits it, we may use de-identified information to improve the service. Identifiers are removed before any such use, and we do not attempt to re-identify it.
- We do not give staff or family members a browsable record of a resident’s conversations. A call record exists and is retained as described in section 8, but the platform surfaces signals, escalations, and messages the resident chose to pass on — not a transcript to read through.
- We do not knowingly collect information from children (see section 13).
5. How we share information
- With the Community that engaged us: check-in confirmations, wellbeing signals, escalation alerts, and routed requests.
- With authorized family members: that the check-in happened, general wellbeing, and messages the resident chooses to share. Nothing is shared with a family member that the resident has declined to share.
- With service providers under written contracts that limit them to our instructions: cloud hosting and storage, telephony and call delivery, and business email. Where any of them may handle protected health information, they sign a business associate agreement with us first. A current list of our service providers is available to a Community on request.
- With The kAIndness Project, our nonprofit counterpart, only if a resident asks for a referral to its free Kai companion program and consents to the referral. We pass the resident’s name, phone number, and the record of that consent, and nothing else. No money is exchanged in either direction, and no information about the resident’s activity in that program comes back to us.
- For legal reasons: to comply with law or legal process, to enforce our agreements, or to protect the safety of a person.
- In a business transfer, such as a merger or acquisition, subject to this policy.
6. Health-related and sensitive information
Residents mention their health during ordinary conversation. When a resident mentions pain, a fall, dizziness, appetite, sleep, or distress, GRACE uses that mention to raise a signal or an alert so a person on staff can follow up. We treat that information as confidential medical information under the California Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (Civil Code section 56 and following), disclose it only as that law and our Community contracts allow, and never use it for marketing.
We use sensitive personal information only to provide the service a resident’s Community has arranged, including safety escalations. We do not use it to infer characteristics about anyone for any other purpose.
Where a Community is a HIPAA covered entity, we sign a business associate agreement with it before we process resident information, and we handle that information under the agreement and the HIPAA Security Rule.
7. Call recording and consent
GRACE calls are recorded. California is an all-party consent state for confidential communications. No resident is enrolled in GRACE until the resident, or a legally authorized representative acting for the resident, has consented in writing to receiving calls from an artificial intelligence voice system and to those calls being recorded and processed.
GRACE identifies itself as an AI at the start of every call and whenever a resident asks. A resident can stop the calls at any time by telling GRACE or by telling any member of staff, and stopping them does not affect the resident’s care or services in any way.
8. How long we keep information
Retention for call records is set in each Community’s contract, so that a Community can match it to its own records policy and to its state’s requirements. We apply a ceiling regardless of what a contract says.
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| Call audio | The period set in the Community’s contract, and in no case longer than 90 days, after which it is deleted automatically |
| Call transcripts | The same period as the call audio for that Community |
| Safeguarding records | Five years, in a separate restricted store, then deleted automatically — see below |
| Wellbeing signals, check-in records, and escalation alerts | For the term of the Community’s contract, as the Community’s care record, and then as its contract directs |
| Audit logs | For the term of the Community’s contract |
| Family notes to a resident | Deleted once GRACE has read the note to the resident on the next call |
| Website inquiries | As long as needed to answer you and to keep a record of our correspondence |
Safeguarding records are kept longer. Where a resident discloses possible abuse, neglect, or financial exploitation, the call audio, the transcript, and the record of that escalation are copied to a separate safeguarding store and kept for five years rather than the period above, then deleted automatically. Five years is deliberate: California allows a claim for financial elder abuse to be brought within four years of discovery, and such matters are often discovered long after the conversation that revealed them. Access to that store is restricted to the Community’s designated contact and to the personnel who support it. Nothing else about the call is treated differently.
A Community, or a resident, can ask us to delete resident information sooner. Where we hold it on a Community’s behalf we will act on that Community’s instruction.
9. Security
We use administrative, technical, and physical safeguards designed to protect personal information, including encryption of call audio and transcripts in transit and at rest, role-based access limits on who within our team can reach resident information, and audit logging of access. Where we act as a business associate, we follow the safeguards required by the HIPAA Security Rule.
No system is completely secure. If a breach affecting a Community’s information occurs, we notify that Community and support the notifications required of it by HIPAA and by California law.
A Community evaluating GRACE can request our security documentation and our current service-provider list by writing to info@gracefulcheckins.com.
10. Your choices and rights
- Residents can ask GRACE, Community staff, or us to stop the calls, to stop sharing with a family member, or to delete their information. A legally authorized representative may act for a resident.
- Family members can change their notification settings or close their family account at any time.
- Anyone can write to us to review or correct information we hold about them. Where we hold it on behalf of a Community, we will work with that Community to respond.
11. California residents
We do not sell personal information and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. We use sensitive personal information only for purposes California law permits without a separate right to limit, namely performing the service that a resident’s Community has arranged.
Whether the California Consumer Privacy Act applies to us as a business depends on thresholds we may not meet, and where we process information for a Community we act as its service provider rather than as a business. Regardless of which is true in a given case, you may make any of the following requests and we will handle it:
- Know what personal information we collect, use, and disclose about you
- Delete personal information we collected from you, subject to the exceptions the law allows
- Correct inaccurate personal information
- Not be discriminated against for exercising any of these rights
Write to info@gracefulcheckins.com with the subject line “Privacy request.” We confirm receipt within 10 business days and respond within 45 calendar days, or tell you within that time if we need the extension the law allows. We verify who you are before acting, in proportion to what you are asking for. An authorized agent may make a request with your signed permission or a valid power of attorney. If your request concerns information we hold on a Community’s behalf, we will direct it to that Community or help it respond.
12. Do Not Track and third-party tracking
This website does not respond to browser Do Not Track signals, because there is no consistent standard for what a website should do when it receives one. We do not permit third parties to collect personal information about your activity across different websites through this site.
This site runs no advertising, no advertising cookies, no social media pixels, and no analytics tool. Our pages are served by a content-delivery network, which receives your IP address in order to deliver them, and our typefaces are loaded from Google Fonts, whose servers also receive your IP address for that request. If we add an analytics tool in future, we will name it here before we do.
13. Children
GRACE is designed for adults living in care communities, and this website is aimed at the people who operate them. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has given us information, write to us and we will delete it.
14. Changes to this policy
We will post any change on this page and update the date at the top. Where a change materially affects how we handle resident information, we notify the affected Communities before it takes effect, and Communities may notify residents and families under their own procedures.
15. How to contact us
kAIndness LLC, a California limited liability company — info@gracefulcheckins.com
Questions about this policy, requests about your information, and requests for our security documentation all go to that address.