Privacy policy

on-the-spectrum is a trading name of OT Spectrum Ltd, a company registered in the United Kingdom. OT Spectrum Ltd is the data controller for the information described here. You can reach us at aydan@on-the-spectrum.co.uk.

You can preview results without an account. UK searches and directory browsing show up to two listings before sign-in. Unsearched categories show the most viewed listings first when browsing data is available. An account is required to view more results. Guidance remains available without signing in.

If you create an account, we store your email address and, if you give it, your name.

If you save a search location in Account settings or when creating a child profile, we store the address or postcode and its map coordinates with your account. You can change or clear the account location in Settings.

If you create a child profile, we store what you enter on that form:

• your child’s first name, if you give one
• their age
• the address or postcode you enter, and the map coordinates worked out from it, so distances to listings can be calculated
• the support needs you select or describe
• things your child enjoys, if you choose to add interests
• a budget, their current school, and a short description, if you add them
• a profile photo, if you upload one
• whether the form was filled in by typing or by voice

If you opt in to improved suggestions, we save which suggested listings you open from the child profile. We use these opens only to find options that families with shared interests explored. We show that group signal only after at least three other families opened the same listing. Other parents cannot see your child's profile or individual activity. You can turn this off on the profile; doing so deletes that profile's saved opens.

If you post in the community forum, your post and the display name you chose are visible to other signed-in users.

We also count page visits to see which parts of the site get used. Our own counter records the page path only — not your name, not your account, and not anything from the web address after the question mark, except a short campaign reference when a link contains one.

When you open a directory listing, we count the listing name and category so we can show the two most opened examples before a search and review activity in Spectrum Pulse. That count does not store your account, postcode, search terms or a visitor identifier. Repeat opens may be counted more than once.

If you try the service without an account, your answers stay in your browser for that session and are never written to our database. Nothing is saved unless you choose to create an account.

When someone comments a campaign keyword on a post from our @onthespectrumuk Instagram account, our app reads the comment through Meta’s Instagram API and may send the approved response as an Instagram private reply. A campaign can also send a public comment reply if its operator has enabled one. We process the comment text only to check the keyword and do not save it or the commenter’s username in our database.

To prevent duplicate replies and enforce a daily limit, we keep the Instagram comment and post IDs, comment time, delivery status, Meta message IDs if a reply succeeds, and a hash of the approved reply. These records are stored with Supabase and the automation runs on Vercel. We keep them while the campaign operates or until they are deleted following a request. We do not use this information to profile commenters or sell it to advertisers.

To ask what we hold about your comment or request deletion, email aydan@on-the-spectrum.co.uk with a link to the Instagram post and the approximate date of your comment. Please do not send your Instagram password. We will respond within 30 days. Deleting our delivery record does not delete your comment or a message already delivered inside Instagram; those can be managed in Instagram.

We do not sell your data, and we do not share it for anyone else’s advertising. It reaches these services only because the product needs them to work:

• Supabase hosts the database and handles sign-in. Your account and any child profile are stored there.
• Vercel hosts the site. We use Vercel Web Analytics and Speed Insights to understand aggregate page use and site performance. They do not set tracking cookies, and their reports are not linked to your name or account.
• OpenStreetMap (Nominatim) converts the address you enter into map coordinates. The address is sent to them for that lookup. Your child’s name, age and needs are not.
• Anthropic processes messages you send to the in-app assistant so it can answer them. Please do not put anything in that chat you would not want processed by a third party.

A child’s support needs count as health data under UK GDPR, and it is treated as the most sensitive thing here. Row-level security in the database means a signed-in parent can only ever read their own child’s profile.

Only what the matching actually uses is asked for. You are never required to provide a diagnosis, medical records or therapy history to search or to get matches.

If you use voice input to fill in the form, the speech is turned into text by your own device or browser. In the iOS app this happens entirely on your iPhone. The recording itself is never uploaded to us.

This service is for parents and carers, not for children. Accounts are not intended for under-18s.

For your account and any child profile, the basis is your consent, given by choosing to create them, together with our legitimate interest in providing a service you asked for. For health-related details about your child we rely on your explicit consent. You can withdraw that at any time by deleting the profile or asking us to.

Your account and child profile are kept until you ask us to delete them. Suggested-listing opens are kept until you turn off improved suggestions or delete the profile. Visit counts are aggregate and not linked to you.

You can ask for a copy of what we hold, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. Email aydan@on-the-spectrum.co.uk and we will action deletion within 30 days.

If you think we have handled your information badly, you can complain to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.

Schools, therapy providers and other listings come from public research and official registers, and each one shows where it came from and when. They are not independently verified, and their presence is not a recommendation. See the listings themselves for the source of each.

If this policy changes materially we will update the date at the top and, where the change affects information already collected, tell account holders directly.