In short
- Fostr is for agencies, not individuals. Each agency signs a written agreement with us, and that agreement wins if it differs from this page.
- Your agency's records belong to your agency. We do not sell them or train AI models on them.
- Fostr helps your staff write documents. A qualified person at your agency checks every document, and your agency is responsible for it.
- Use Fostr only for your agency's lawful work, and keep your sign-in to yourself.
1.About these terms
These terms are between Fostr Technologies Inc., a Delaware corporation ("Fostr", "we", "us"), and the agency or organization that uses Fostr ("you"), including the people it lets use the service.
Your agency also signs a written agreement with us. If that agreement and these terms disagree, the agreement wins.
Postal address: Fostr Technologies Inc., 131 Cornwell Drive, Bear, DE 19701, United States.
2.What Fostr does
Fostr is a case-record system for child-welfare and foster-care work. Caseworkers record a visit in a web browser or in Fostr's iPad app: typed, dictated or handwritten notes, and answers to the questions on your agency's own forms. Fostr keeps the record and helps draft the documents your agency needs from it.
When Fostr drafts an answer from a worker's notes, it shows the worker which notes the draft came from. Nothing drafted becomes part of the record until the worker saves it, and a saved answer counts as the worker's own. Before a record is filed, Fostr asks the worker to confirm it is complete and accurate and records their name as the signer.
Fostr does not file anything with a court, a state system or any other authority for you, and it does not make placement, safety or clinical decisions. It emails someone outside your agency only when one of your workers asks it to, for example to collect a signature.
We may add, change or remove features. If a change takes away something your agency pays for, we will tell you before it happens.
3.Who can use Fostr
Fostr is a service for agencies and organizations. It is not offered to the public, to caseworkers acting on their own, to foster parents or to children. People use Fostr through their agency, and each account belongs to that agency.
An agency may give a young person a limited account to see some of their own information. That account cannot change case records.
Agency staff can also email a parent, caregiver, guardian or young person a link to view and sign a document. The link is not an account. It opens only what was sent for signing.
These terms do not create a contract between Fostr and anyone whose information is in a case record. Their rights come from the law and their relationship with the agency; see our Privacy Notice.
4.Accounts and signing in
- Your agency decides who has an account and what role each person has. We set up your first administrator, and accounts are added and removed at your agency's direction.
- Keep your list of users up to date. Tell us as soon as someone leaves, and change a person's role when their job changes.
- Each sign-in is for one person. Never share an account.
- Everyone signs in with a password and a code from an authenticator app.
- If you think an account has been misused, tell us right away through the process on our Security page.
5.Rules for using Fostr
You and your users must not:
- put in information your agency is not allowed to hold or share with a service provider;
- open a case or record without a real work reason, or try to reach another agency's data;
- use Fostr to watch, harass or profile a young person, a family or a colleague;
- copy or keep case information outside your agency's own confidentiality and retention rules;
- probe, scan or try to break into Fostr or get around its controls, except for good-faith security research reported through our Security page;
- copy, resell or reverse engineer Fostr, or use it to build a competing product;
- upload malware or overload the service.
Fostr records who viewed and changed what. Reading a child-welfare record without authority can break the law, not only these terms (see section 7).
6.Your agency's data
You own it
Case records, notes, documents and everything else your agency puts into Fostr belong to your agency. We claim no ownership, and we never sell them, rent them or use them for advertising.
We use it only to serve you
We hold your information to run Fostr for you, on your instructions. Your agency decides what is collected, who can see it and how long it is kept. Our Privacy Notice has the details, including the companies that help us.
AI
We never train AI models on your case records. When Fostr drafts text, it uses Amazon Bedrock, an AWS service, in the United States, only for that request. Case records are never sent to a consumer AI product.
Service data
We use data about how the service runs, such as error rates, speed, volume and security logs, to run, protect and improve it. Anything we publish from it is combined so that it does not identify your agency, your staff or any child or family.
7.Your agency's responsibilities
Your agency owes duties to the children, families and courts whose information is in Fostr. Your agency is responsible for:
- having the legal right to collect, hold and share the information it puts into Fostr, and giving any notices or getting any consents its law requires;
- what its users do in Fostr;
- the accuracy of what its staff record, and having a qualified person check every document before it is filed, sent or relied on;
- its own confidentiality duties. For example, in Massachusetts releasing abuse or neglect reports without authority is a crime (M.G.L. c.119 §51E), and in New Hampshire knowingly disclosing case records unlawfully is a misdemeanor (RSA 170-G:8-a);
- giving each person the right role, and telling us whether caseworkers should see only the children they work with.
8.Confidentiality
Each of us will keep the other's confidential information private, use it only for this service, and protect it at least as carefully as our own. Case information is always confidential, and the law where your agency works also protects it.
This does not cover information that is already public through no fault of the person receiving it, that they already knew, or that they developed on their own. If the law forces either of us to disclose the other's confidential information, we will give notice first where the law allows.
Our staff get only the access they need to run and support Fostr. Our staff roles cannot open case records. Our support console shows each agency's user accounts and a limited view of its activity records, never case records, and everything our staff do in it is recorded.
9.Our software, and your feedback
Fostr's software, design, documentation, name and logo belong to us and our licensors. While your agreement is in force, your agency may use Fostr for its own work. This right cannot be transferred, and it does not grant any other license.
If you send us ideas or feedback, we may use them to improve Fostr without owing you anything. Please do not put case information in feedback.
10.Availability and support
We aim to keep Fostr available whenever your caseworkers are working, and we plan maintenance outside working hours where we can. Any uptime commitment, and any credits for missing it, are set out in your agency's agreement.
Support hours and contacts are set in your agreement. Security problems follow the process on our Security page.
11.Fees
Fees, billing and payment terms are set in your agency's agreement or order form. Nothing on this page creates a payment obligation.
12.Disclaimers
Fostr is a documentation tool. It is not legal or clinical advice, it does not replace professional judgment, and it does not decide what is safe or right for a child. Its drafts are starting points for a qualified person to check.
Except where these terms or your agency's agreement say otherwise, and as far as the law allows, Fostr is provided "as is", without implied warranties such as merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose or non-infringement. We do not promise that Fostr will never be interrupted or have errors, or that a drafted document will satisfy a particular court, law or state system.
13.Limits on liability
As far as the law allows, neither of us is liable to the other for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue or goodwill.
Each side's total liability is capped. The cap, and what falls outside it (usually breach of confidentiality, a data-security incident caused by a party's failure, indemnities and unpaid fees), are set out in your agency's agreement. Nothing limits liability that the law does not allow to be limited.
14.Ending the service
These terms last as long as your agency's agreement. Either of us may end them if the other seriously breaks them and does not fix it within a reasonable time after notice, or at once if continuing would break the law.
When the service ends:
- access to Fostr stops;
- your agency can get a copy of its records during the period, and in the format, its agreement sets;
- after that period we delete your agency's data, and deleted data leaves our encrypted backups as they expire (see our Privacy Notice);
- we keep activity and security records, the staff account details they refer to, and anything else the law requires, for the periods in our Privacy Notice.
The sections on confidentiality, our software, disclaimers, limits on liability and governing law continue after the service ends.
15.Governing law
The governing law and the courts for disputes are set in your agency's agreement. Fostr is a Delaware corporation. If your agency's procurement rules or public contract require its own state's law and courts, those rules apply.
16.Changes to these terms
We may update these terms. Before an important change takes effect, we will tell your agency through Fostr or its named contact, and the change will not apply backward. The date at the top shows the current version. Unless your agency's agreement says otherwise, using Fostr after a change takes effect means the new terms apply.
17.General
- Neither of us may transfer these terms without the other's consent, except to a company that takes over all or most of the business.
- These terms do not make us partners, joint venturers or employer and employee.
- If one part of these terms cannot be enforced, the rest still applies.
- Not enforcing a part of these terms does not mean giving it up.
- Neither of us is responsible for delays caused by events truly outside our control, except for payments owed.
- These terms, your agency's agreement and our Privacy Notice are the whole agreement on this subject.
18.Contact us
Questions about these terms: legal@fostrtech.com. Send legal notices to Fostr Technologies Inc., 131 Cornwell Drive, Bear, DE 19701, United States, or by email to legal@fostrtech.com, unless your agency's agreement names another address.