The short version
- Every review on Find-Care is collected by Find-Care through this site. We do not scrape, import or licence reviews from any other platform.
- Reviews are accepted only from people with first-hand experience of the care. Staff, contractors, competitors and their immediate families cannot leave a review.
- A review is checked by Find-Care, then sent to the provider, who has 30 days to reply to it or dispute it. If they do neither, it publishes automatically and counts towards their score.
- A provider cannot pay to have a review removed, hidden, edited or reordered.
- A star rating is shown on a profile only once the provider has at least five published reviews.
On this page (11 sections)
1. Scope and status#
1.1 This policy applies to every review submitted to, and published on, www.find-care.co.uk.
1.2 Providers accept the same rules as a condition of inviting anyone to review them. Where this policy and the provider terms differ, we apply the stricter of the two.
1.3 The review system is not yet open for submissions. Providers can prepare invitations in their account, and no review has been submitted or published on this site. This policy states the rules that apply from the point it opens.
2. Where our reviews come from#
2.1 Every review published on Find-Care is collected by Find-Care, through this site, from a person we have identified.
2.2 We do not copy, scrape, import, licence or syndicate reviews from any other website, review platform or provider’s own materials.
2.3 No score or review displayed on this site originated anywhere other than this site.
3. Who may leave a review#
3.1 A review may be left by a person with genuine first-hand experience of the care provided: the person who received the care, or a relative, friend, attorney or professional who arranged it or was closely involved in it.
3.2 The following may not leave a review:
- the provider’s owners, employees and contractors;
- anyone who works for a competing provider;
- the immediate family of anyone in the two categories above.
3.3 One review per person, per period of care. Where circumstances change materially, the reviewer may update their existing review rather than submit a second one.
3.4 A review must be written by the reviewer, in their own words, about their own experience. A provider must not write, edit, translate, summarise, dictate or otherwise influence what a review says.
3.5 A provider must not offer payment, gifts, discounts, fee reductions, prize draws or any other benefit in return for a review, or for changing or removing one.
3.6 A provider must invite families openly and evenly. A provider must not screen people in order to invite only those expected to be positive, and must not treat anyone differently because of the review they left.
4. What a review must contain#
4.1 To submit a review you must give us:
- your full name;
- your address;
- a contact telephone number. This is required, because we use it to verify the review as set out at 5.2;
- an email address, if you have one. This is optional. An address from a disposable or temporary email service is not accepted;
- your relationship to the person who received the care;
- the month the care you are describing took place;
- an overall rating of the service, from one to five stars;
- a written explanation of your experience, of at least 50 characters and no more than 300.
4.2 The 50 character minimum counts letters and numbers. Punctuation and spacing are not counted towards it.
4.3 Your first name and surname initial are published with your review, together with your relationship to the person receiving care. Your full name, address, telephone number and email address are never published and are never given to the provider.
4.4 Do not include information that identifies another resident, another family, or a member of staff by name. Do not include clinical or diagnosis details about a person other than yourself.
5. Checks before publication#
5.1 Every review is checked against this policy before it is published.
5.2 To submit a review you must verify who you are, in one of two ways:
- by confirming your telephone number: we send a code to it by text message, and you enter that code to complete your submission; or
- by signing in with an established Google or Apple account.
5.3 We may also contact you independently to confirm who you are and the care you describe, including by telephone, which is why a contact number is required at 4.1.
5.4 We may ask the provider for records showing that the care took place.
5.5 A review we cannot verify is not published.
5.6 When your review is submitted, we email you to confirm we have received it, where you have given us an email address.
5.7 We publish positive and negative reviews alike. A review is not rejected for being critical.
6. Publication, reply and dispute#
6.1 A review that passes the checks in section 5 follows this sequence.
- The review is placed in the provider’s account. It is not visible to families at this stage.
- We email the provider to tell them a review is waiting and to direct them to their account to read it.
- The provider has 30 days to reply to the review or to dispute it.
- If the organisation applies neither a reply nor a dispute within those 30 days, the review is published automatically and counts towards that provider’s score.
6.2 Publish. The provider may publish the review immediately, with or without a reply. A reply is published alongside the review, and must not identify a resident, a family member or a member of staff, or disclose personal or care information about the reviewer.
6.3 Publishing ends the provider’s right to dispute that review. A review the provider has chosen to publish cannot afterwards be disputed.
6.4 Dispute. Where the provider believes a review breaches this policy, an Organisation Manager for that provider must email Find-Care within the 30 days with a detailed written explanation and evidence of why the review should not be listed. A dispute without evidence is not considered.
6.5 A dispute raised within the 30 days stops the automatic publication at 6.1 while we consider it. We consider the dispute against this policy and tell the provider the outcome.
6.6 The 30 days is the whole of the provider’s window. A provider who neither publishes nor disputes within it cannot dispute the review afterwards.
6.7 A dispute does not remove a review. Where a review has already been published and is then disputed, it remains published unless and until Find-Care staff remove it. A review is never removed because a provider disagrees with it.
6.8 Only Find-Care staff can remove a review, and every removal is recorded with the reason for it and the member of staff who made the decision.
7. Scores and structured data#
7.1 A review carries an overall rating from one to five stars.
7.2 A provider’s profile shows a star rating only once that provider has at least five published reviews. Below five, the reviews are shown without an average.
7.3 The average shown is weighted so that a small number of reviews moves it less than a long record does. A single five star review does not put a provider above one with a consistent history.
7.4 The number of reviews behind a score is always displayed next to it.
7.5 Where a provider has a published score, that score and the number of reviews are included in the machine-readable structured data on their profile, so that search engines and AI assistants report the same figure a visitor sees. Where a provider has no published score, no rating is included in that data.
7.6 A published score updates when a review is published or removed. The structured data updates with it.
7.7 The CQC rating shown on a profile is separate from the review score, comes from the Care Quality Commission, and is not affected by reviews. See section 2 of our listing and ranking policy.
8. Removal#
8.1 A published review is removed where:
- it is found to breach this policy; or
- the reviewer asks us to remove it.
8.2 No payment by a provider affects whether a review is published, where it appears, how it is ordered, or whether it remains published.
9. Falsified reviews#
9.1 Where we find that a review has been falsified or forged, written or edited by the provider or anyone connected to them, or obtained by incentive, we remove it without notice.
9.2 Depending on the seriousness we may also:
- remove that provider’s other reviews;
- place a notice on their profile;
- suspend their account;
- permanently remove their organisation from the Find-Care directory.
9.3 Serious or repeated cases may be reported to the Competition and Markets Authority and to the provider’s regulator.
10. Personal information#
10.1 We use the details at 4.1 to contact you, verify your review and publish it. Publication is limited to the fields listed at 4.3.
10.2 Where a provider invites you to review them, they give us your name and contact details. They must have your permission before doing so.
10.3 Our privacy policy sets out how long we keep this information and your rights over it, including asking us to delete your review.
10.4 A concern that a person is at risk is not a review. Section 1 of our complaints procedure sets out where to report it, and we act on it under that procedure whether or not it is also submitted as a review.