Full privacy policy

Information about children in care

My Chapters: Letters is used by foster carers to write about the children they look after. You enter that information, it stays encrypted on your iPhone (and in your own iCloud, if you share with your partner), and it is never sent to us. We can’t see, share or recover it.

You remain responsible for it under your fostering service’s policies and data protection law. Some services have rules about keeping notes and photos on a personal phone, so please check yours.

Encryption, app lock and backups

The app encrypts everything with AES-256. The key is kept in your iPhone’s keychain. It is included in your iPhone’s own iCloud or encrypted computer backup, so restoring a new iPhone from that backup brings your letters across. It is never synced through iCloud Keychain, and we never receive it.

If you set an app passcode, only a salted, one-way hash of it is stored, on this iPhone only. If you forget it, you can reset it with your iPhone’s own passcode or Face ID.

Backup files are encrypted with a password you choose. We can’t recover a forgotten password. Automatic backup saves to a folder you pick, such as iCloud Drive, under Apple’s terms. Nothing is ever uploaded to us.

Sharing with your partner

Sharing is off unless you turn it on. If you invite your partner, your children, letters, photos, memories and a few shared settings (your names, how letters are signed and when weeks start) are copied to a private area of your own iCloud account and shared with the people you invite, using Apple’s CloudKit. Your partner’s changes are stored there too. Nothing is ever sent to us, and we cannot see it.

The words of letters, notes and settings are kept in CloudKit’s end-to-end encrypted fields. Photos, drawings and recordings are encrypted on the iPhone before upload, each with its own key, and that key is kept in an end-to-end encrypted field beside it. This is in addition to your iPhone’s own encryption. Storage counts towards the iCloud space of the person who started sharing.

Your passcode, reminders, backup settings and widget settings are never shared. If you stop sharing, the shared copy is deleted from your iCloud, and each phone keeps the letters it already has. If your partner leaves, their phone keeps its copy but stops updating.

Exporting and sharing

Letters and letter books become PDFs only when you export or send them, and they go wherever you send them. Before sharing photos of a child, check it has been agreed with their social worker. If you email a letter, it goes from your own email account to the people you choose. If you add a child’s reference number, it is included in those emails only if you leave that setting on.

Writing help, Siri and Apple Intelligence

Suggest improvements uses Apple’s on-device language model. Your letter is processed on your iPhone and is never sent to us or to Apple. It only ever suggests: nothing changes unless you choose to use a suggestion.

If you use Apple’s own Writing Tools on your letter, Apple may process the text on its Private Cloud Compute servers, which Apple says never store it. That is Apple’s feature, under Apple’s privacy policy.

The Siri shortcut “Add to a letter” only works on an unlocked iPhone. What you dictate goes into the letter on your phone. Children’s names are not added to Siri’s suggestions.

Memories, recordings and speech

Memories are notes you type, or short recordings you make with the microphone, to help you write a letter later. They are stored on your iPhone, encrypted in the same way as your photos and letters, and are included in your own backup files. They are never part of a letter, an email or a book, and are never sent to us. If you share with your partner, your partner’s phone has them too. A memory only reaches a letter when you choose to add its words.

If you ask My Chapters: Letters to turn a recording into words, it uses Apple’s speech recognition on your iPhone only. If your iPhone cannot do that without sending audio away, the app does not try, and your recording is kept for you to listen to or type out yourself.

Widgets and sharing from Photos

The My Chapters: Letters widget shows whether a letter is waiting to be written and how many days are left. It does not show a child’s name unless you turn that on in Settings, and on the Lock Screen a name stays hidden until you unlock your iPhone. To do this the app keeps a small status file on your iPhone, in storage shared only with the app’s own widget and Photos extension.

If you share photos to My Chapters: Letters from the Photos app, they wait on your iPhone, in the same shared storage, until you next open the app. It then files them in the child’s letter, resized and encrypted like every other photo, and the waiting copies are deleted. The extension also reads a list of your children’s first names, which is readable only while your iPhone is unlocked, so you can choose whose letter the photos join. None of this leaves your iPhone.

Microphone

Only when you tap Record on a memory. The recording is stored encrypted, is never sent to us, and only leaves your iPhone if you share with your partner.

Speech Recognition

Only if you ask for a recording’s words. It runs on your iPhone, so the audio is not sent to Apple or to us.

Photos

You choose photos in the iOS photo picker, and the app only receives those. It resizes them, removes location details and stores them encrypted.

Notifications

If you turn on reminders, they are scheduled on your iPhone to nudge you to write. They never show a child’s name, and nothing is sent from a server.

Face ID or Touch ID

If you turn it on to unlock the app, iOS checks your face or fingerprint and only tells the app whether it matched. The app never receives biometric data.