Qchirp (“we”, “us”) is a daily family-feedback tool used by early-learning services (childcare centres) to gather quick parent/carer feedback and turn it into Quality Improvement Plan (QIP) evidence. This policy explains what personal information we handle, how, and your choices. It applies to our website, our admin dashboards, and the Qchirp Kiosk app.
1. The short version
- The kiosk question screen used by families is anonymous to us: we do not ask for, or store, any name, contact detail, child’s information, or device identifier that identifies a family member, and we hold nothing that ties an answer to a person. The centre sees its answers as counts and as a list of answers with the time each was given; centres agree not to try to match answers to families.
- The personal information we hold is staff account information and workplace records for a centre’s directors and educators (e.g. work email, name, reflections, compliance and qualification records) so the centre can run its dashboards, and application and enquiry information from people who apply for a Founding Centre place or contact us about Qchirp.
- We do not sell personal information. We do not use it for advertising.
2. Information we collect
a) Family kiosk responses (anonymous to us). When a family taps an answer at the kiosk, we store the chosen answer, the question, a timestamp, the kiosk device’s internal label, and (if a non-English language was selected) which language was used. None of this identifies an individual. We do not collect names, children’s details, contact information, photos, or precise location. Centres may upload images (for example a notice or flyer) to show on the kiosk screen; the centre is responsible for having permission for any person who appears in an image it uploads, and we recommend not uploading photos of children.
b) Staff account information and workplace records. For directors and educators we store a work email address, a display name, a securely hashed password, role/access level, and basic login timestamps. Centres provide this when they invite staff. Centres may also record, about their staff, compliance and qualification information (for example first-aid or Working with Vulnerable People check expiry dates), uploaded evidence files such as certificates — which can include a date of birth or a card number — policy acknowledgements, staff-meeting attendance and minutes, and replies to and edits of reflections. These are the centre’s workplace records; we hold them on the centre’s behalf and only to provide the service.
c) Educator reflections and replies. Educators may write reflective notes about their practice, and colleagues and directors may reply. These are attributed to their author and visible to the centre’s team and leadership. They are the centre’s records; we process them on the centre’s behalf. Reflections are about an educator’s practice, not about individual children — educators are asked to describe what children said and did without naming or otherwise identifying them (see “Children’s information” below).
d) Technical information. Like any web service, our servers record standard log data (e.g. IP address and browser type) for security and reliability. The kiosk is a shared device at the centre, so a log entry from it records the centre’s connection, not a family member’s — which is what “anonymous to us” means above: we hold nothing that ties a kiosk answer to a person. The Qchirp Kiosk app sends periodic “heartbeats” (a pairing token, app version, and device status) so a centre can see whether its kiosk is online. Our dashboards set a login session cookie, which is strictly necessary for the service, and remember a display preference (light or dark theme) in your browser. We do not set advertising or analytics cookies.
e) Application and enquiry information. When someone applies for a Founding Centre place on our website, or emails us about Qchirp, we collect what they give us: contact name, work email address, an optional phone number, their role, centre/service details (name, state or territory, postcode, number of centres, current sign-in software), their answers to the application questions, and any correspondence relating to the application. Our application form also records first-party attribution — the campaign parameters (UTM values) on the link that brought the visitor to our site, the referring page, and the first page visited — so we can understand how applicants found Qchirp. We do not use third-party analytics or advertising trackers on our public pages. Standard technical information (IP address and browser type) is recorded with an application to prevent misuse of the form.
3. How we use information
- To provide the service: show the right question, record responses, generate QIP evidence reports and analytics for the centre, and keep the centre’s compliance, policy and meeting records.
- To authenticate and secure staff accounts.
- To translate questions into a centre’s enabled languages, and to help educators write, tidy, tag and check their reflections (see “AI features” below).
- To send staff the emails the service needs: invitations, password resets, and — where a centre turns them on — notifications about replies, new reflections and upcoming compliance or policy dates.
- To maintain, debug, and protect the service.
- For application and enquiry information: to assess applications, contact applicants about their application, arrange onboarding, prevent misuse of the form, understand how applicants found Qchirp, and maintain appropriate business records. Agreeing that we may contact you about your application is not consent to general marketing — we will not add you to a marketing list on that basis, and we do not currently operate one.
4. AI features
Some optional features use a third-party AI provider (Anthropic’s Claude):
- Question translation. Translating kiosk question text into a centre’s chosen languages.
- Reflection writing help, at the educator’s request: “Help me think” (prompts and a scaffold — it does not write the reflection), “Tidy it for me” (a proposed rewrite of the educator’s own words into a professional register, shown as a word-by-word comparison that the educator accepts or rejects), and an NQS tag suggestion. The Tidy is instructed to replace any child’s name with a neutral phrase.
- Names check. When a reflection or a reply is saved, its text is automatically sent to the AI provider to flag words that may be a person’s name. The check is advisory: the educator sees the flag and decides, and it never blocks a save. Children should never be named in a reflection; colleagues may be.
The AI assists with wording — it does not make decisions about individuals, and a human always reviews any AI-assisted content before it is used as evidence. Only the question text or the educator-authored text is sent — no staff account details and no family information (there is none). Anthropic processes this text in the United States, does not use it to train its models, and deletes API inputs and outputs within 30 days (Anthropic’s published commercial terms, checked 18 September 2026).
Original wording is not kept once reviewed. When an educator uses the Tidy, we keep their pre-tidy words alongside the saved reflection only so their director can see what the AI changed; the moment a director reviews or edits the reflection, the pre-tidy words are deleted from our database. When an educator dictates a reflection, the raw transcript is deleted once the educator has reviewed and saved the text.
Educators may also optionally speak or record a reflection aloud (in English); that audio is sent to a transcription provider (OpenAI) to convert it to text, and is never stored by us. We use two transcription methods, and in both the audio is processed in the United States and is not used to train OpenAI’s models: (1) live transcription (words appear as the educator speaks) uses OpenAI’s Realtime API — per OpenAI’s API data controls, audio sent to this endpoint may be retained by OpenAI for up to 30 days solely for abuse monitoring and is then deleted; (2) whole-clip transcription (used as a fallback) uses OpenAI’s audio-transcription endpoint, where the audio is not retained at all.
5. Who we share information with
We share information only with service providers who help us run Qchirp, under contract and only as needed:
- Hosting: Fly.io (application + database hosting; servers located in Sydney, Australia). A centre’s live data is stored in Australia. Our host also keeps short-lived storage snapshots of the database volume, in Sydney.
- Backups: a nightly copy of the database is stored, for disaster recovery only, as a private artifact on GitHub (Microsoft) — United States — and is automatically deleted after 30 days.
- Email delivery: Postmark (staff invitations, password resets, notification emails, and the confirmation sent when an application is received) — United States. Postmark keeps a copy of each email it sends for us — including any reflection excerpt in a notification — for 7 days for delivery troubleshooting, then deletes it.
- AI processing: Anthropic (Claude), for the optional translation, writing-assist and names-check features above — United States. Anthropic deletes the text within 30 days and does not train on it.
- Voice transcription: OpenAI, to transcribe an optionally-spoken or -recorded reflection into text. Live-transcription audio may be retained by OpenAI for up to 30 days for abuse monitoring only; whole-clip transcription audio is not retained. Neither is used for training — United States.
- Tour video: the product tour on our public pages is hosted by YouTube (Google) and loads only when you press play — United States. Until then the page shows a picture we host ourselves.
The live service and its database are hosted in Australia. Some providers process specific data outside Australia (the United States), for the purposes listed above. Each of them is bound by contract to handle it only for that purpose, not to use it for training, and to delete it on the timelines stated. We remain responsible for personal information we send to them. We will update this list, and tell each centre’s director, before adding a provider that receives personal information. Application and enquiry information is stored on the same hosting and sent through the same email provider as everything else in this section. We do not sell or rent personal information to anyone, and we do not use it for third-party advertising.
6. Children’s information
Qchirp is designed so that families do not enter any child’s information. The kiosk is anonymous to us. Our accounts are for adults (centre staff). The app is not directed to children and is rated for a general/adult audience.
Educator reflections are about practice, not children. Qchirp is not a child-record or learning-documentation system and should not be used as one. Educators are asked, on the reflection form itself, to describe what children said and did without naming or otherwise identifying them; an automatic names check flags possible names before saving; the AI tidy is instructed to remove any child’s name; and an educator’s original wording is deleted once the reflection is reviewed (see “AI features”). If a child’s name is nonetheless entered, the reflection is the centre’s record and the centre’s director can edit or archive it at any time. Whether a service lists Qchirp in its enrolment or consent documents is a matter for that service; our design goal is that no child’s personal information is entered in the first place. A suggested notice for family handbooks is on our guides page.
7. Security
Passwords are stored only as secure hashes, never in plain text. The service is served over HTTPS. The database lives on an encrypted storage volume in Sydney, Australia, and access to production systems is limited to the operator. Each centre’s data is isolated to that centre, and staff can only access their own centre’s information.
Data breaches. If we become aware of unauthorised access to, or loss of, a centre’s information, we will tell the centre’s director without undue delay and in any case within 72 hours of becoming aware, with what we know at the time, so the centre can meet its own obligations under the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme.
8. Retention
We keep a centre’s data for as long as the centre’s account is active, because QIP evidence is, by design, a historical record. If a centre closes its account, its data stays read-only for 90 days so the centre can request an export of its evidence; we then delete or de-identify its personal information, except where we must keep it to meet a legal obligation. Anonymous family responses may be retained as aggregate QIP evidence. An educator’s original wording (a dictated transcript, or the words before an AI tidy) is deleted once the reflection is reviewed, as described under “AI features”. Nightly backups are automatically deleted after 30 days, and our host’s storage snapshots age out within days, so a deleted record is gone from every copy within about a month of deletion.
Application and enquiry information is kept only as long as reasonably required to assess the application, communicate with the applicant, arrange onboarding where an application is accepted, and maintain appropriate business records — including a record of the decision, and of the Founding Centre terms a centre was offered. You can ask us to delete it sooner (see below).
9. Your choices, access and complaints
If you are a director or educator, most of what we hold about you is your centre’s record — your account, your reflections and replies, your compliance items. Ask your centre first: it can view, correct or archive those in the dashboard, and we act on its instructions. Centre staff can also view and update their own account details in the dashboard. Contact us directly for anything about our own handling of your information.
If you want to access, correct, or delete personal information we hold — including an application you have made — or you have a privacy concern, contact us at hello@qchirp.com. If you make a privacy complaint, we will acknowledge it within 7 days, look into it, and give you a written response within 30 days. We may need to keep some information to meet a legal obligation or to maintain a necessary business record (for example, that an application was declined), and we will tell you if that is the case. If you are not satisfied, you may contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) at oaic.gov.au.
10. Changes
We may update this policy. We will post the new version here and update the “Last updated” date, and we will email each centre’s director before a material change takes effect.
11. Contact
Elvis Juric (trading as Qchirp) — ABN 60 088 029 550
hello@qchirp.com
Australian Capital Territory, Australia