Training › For care providers › Care fundamentals

You are at Sylvie's apartment in Montreal Nord. Her son Marc tells you something about her finances he asks you not to repeat to his sister. Two days later, the sister asks you, casually, how Sylvie is doing. After this module, you can keep what Marc told you to yourself, and keep what the sister asked to herself too. You can ask before you take a photo. You can write factual notes in the iCaria app without your opinions about the family in them. You can hold the line that everything in Sylvie's home stays in Sylvie's home, with the one safeguarding exception.

Why this matters

Older adults give up a lot of privacy when they accept care at home. They cannot lock the bathroom door. They cannot hide their pill bottles. They cannot keep family arguments out of earshot. The care relationship works because they trust you with everything you happen to learn in the course of it.

Confidentiality is how that trust is kept. Without it, the older adult and the family have to manage what they say in front of you, and the visit becomes a performance instead of a home.

What counts as private

The short answer is everything in the home that you did not know before you walked in.

• Health information. Medications, conditions, appointments, diagnoses, anything you see in the bathroom cabinet or hear on the phone.
• Finances. Bills on the counter, conversations about money, who is paying for what, who is on what account.
• Religion and politics. What the family believes, who they vote for, how they pray, where they worship.
• Family relationships. Who is not speaking to whom, who is helping and who is not, who is hoping to inherit what.
• Household contents. What is in the cupboards, what the home looks like, what valuables are visible.
• The older adult's body. Anything you see when you are helping with personal care.
• Things said in passing. A comment over coffee, a worry murmured while folding laundry, a memory the older adult shared without thinking. All of it stays in the home.

Ask before you take a photo

Phones are useful. iCaria sometimes asks for a photo of a completed task, a fall risk in the home, or a piece of paperwork. Ask first, every time.

• "Mrs Diallo, may I take a photo of the kitchen so I can show iCaria the rug I mentioned?"
• "Mr Khalil, may I photograph this prescription bottle so I can read the name to the pharmacist?"
• If the older adult is uncomfortable, the answer is no. Move on.
• If the older adult cannot give informed consent and there is no family member to ask, do not take the photo. Send a text description through the app instead.
• Never photograph the older adult themselves without explicit, separate consent for that specific photo.
• Never share a photo from a home anywhere outside the iCaria app. Not in a private message to a friend. Not on social media. Not in a family group chat.

One family member is not all family members

Different family members hear different things in different visits. That is normal. It is also a trap.

• If Marc tells you something about Sylvie and asks you to keep it from his sister, treat that as the default for anything family-member-specific. You are not the bridge between them.
• If the sister asks you a direct question, you can say "I would rather Marc or Sylvie share that. Have you spoken with them this week?"
• The exception is the older adult themselves. Sylvie can share anything about Sylvie. You can repeat what Sylvie has told you, if she has invited the question.
• When something starts to feel like a campaign between family members, finish the visit and message your iCaria advocate the same day. The advocate handles the family conversation.

How to write notes in the app

The iCaria app keeps a record of every visit. That record is read by the family member who booked you, your advocate, and sometimes iCaria's safety team. Write it like all three are reading.

• Stick to what happened. "Made lunch (soup, bread). Walked to the park. Mrs Diallo seemed tired and asked to rest after the walk."
• Leave your opinions out. Not "the daughter was rude again". Not "the home seemed sad". Note what was said or done, not how you felt about it.
• Use the older adult's exact words for anything they explicitly told you, in quotes if useful.
• Keep medical observations factual and limited to what you can see. "Two new bruises on the right forearm" is factual. "Looks like she fell" is speculation.
• If you would not be comfortable for the older adult to read it, do not write it.

What lives where in iCaria

The platform stores different kinds of information in different places. Knowing what lives where helps you keep each piece in its right home.

• Family account. The service address, the address notes (gate code, parking, where to leave shoes), household tags. Family-level details that apply to every visit.
• Elder profile. The older adult's identity, medical safety information, their own phone or email, per-elder preferences.
• User account. The family member's own name, phone, email, and personal address. Separate from the family account.
• Tax information. Full SSN, SIN, bank account numbers, and tax artifacts are encrypted at rest. The admin UI shows only the last few digits. Logs always redact this information.

You do not need to know the technical detail. You do need to know that the platform takes these distinctions seriously, and that if you ever see something that looks like a privacy slip in the app, you tell your advocate.

The one exception

Safeguarding overrides confidentiality, every time. If you see signs of harm, neglect, or unsafe conditions, the privacy default does not apply. You report to your advocate the same day. The Safeguarding module covers the full path.

That is the only exception. Curiosity, social pressure, family pressure, and convenience are not exceptions. Safeguarding is.

Finding this again Open Training from your portal any time to come back to this module. A knowledge quiz follows. Advocates pass it once before activating a caseload, and everyone re-takes it each year when they renew their certification.