Last updated: 13 November 2026.

opencare.help is a free, family-friendly directory of community help, mental-health and crisis-support services. You can also find events, volunteer roles and needs shared by local groups. You can search and read the site without an account. Listings are information only, not an endorsement, and not professional, medical, legal or financial advice. If you are in danger, call your local emergency number (000 in Australia).

What we collect

• Feedback, reports and “was this right?”. If you send feedback, report a listing or tell us whether a page was helpful, we keep your message, the page it came from, the time, and a one-way scrambled (hashed) form of your connection to help stop spam. Your email is collected only if you choose to give it, so we can reply. Please do not include passwords, card numbers, health records or other private details.
• Organisation accounts. People who manage an organisation’s listing give a name, email, password, suburb and state, plus the organisation’s public details (such as name, registration number, phone, email and website). The account holder’s name and email are not shown publicly. Public organisation details appear on the listing.
• Questions (Ask OpenCare). If you ask a general question, we keep the question so we can draft an answer and so a person can review it before it may appear on the site. The form does not ask for your name or email, and published questions do not include your personal details. The question is sent to a third-party AI service to draft the answer. Please do not include names, contact details or private health information in a question.
• Page view counts. We use a privacy-friendly visit counter on our own servers to see which pages are used. These counts are not used to show ads or to follow you across other websites.
• Technical data. Our hosting and Cloudflare, which protects the site and helps it load quickly, handle standard technical information such as IP addresses, browser type, the page requested and the time, to deliver pages, block attacks and fix problems.
• Security checks. On some forms, including account sign-up, feedback and reports, we use Cloudflare Turnstile, a check that helps us tell people from automated spam. Your browser connects to Cloudflare to complete the check.

What is stored on your device

A few small settings stay on your own device and are not used to track you across other sites. You can clear them at any time in your browser settings. These include your language choice (saved in your browser and in a small cookie), a list of services you choose to save, and whether you have already seen our “support us” message. If you have an organisation account, essential cookies keep you signed in.

Maps, location and other services

Maps load from OpenStreetMap, so your browser connects to OpenStreetMap’s servers. If you use “near me”, your browser asks your permission and uses your location on the page to find services close to you. We do not save that location with your name. Voice features, where offered, use your browser’s built-in speech service. If you follow a link to an organisation, a crisis line, a sister site, or a support page such as Buy Me a Coffee, that other site’s own privacy policy applies.

What we don’t do

• We don’t sell personal information, and we don’t send marketing emails.
• We don’t take messages from you to organisations, and we don’t ask for health records, identity documents or payment details. You contact organisations directly by their own phone, email or website, and what you share with them is covered by their privacy policy.
• No display advertising (such as Google AdSense) is shown on this site today.

Why we use this information

To run the directory, reply to feedback, review questions, manage organisation listings, keep the site safe and understand which pages are useful.

How long we keep it

We keep personal information only for as long as we need it to run the site, answer your request or meet legal obligations, and then we delete or de-identify it. Standard server logs are kept for a short time for security and troubleshooting.

Security and where data is stored

Pages are delivered over encrypted HTTPS connections, and access to our systems is limited. No website can be completely secure, so please do not send sensitive details such as passwords, card numbers or health information through the site. Our server is in Australia. Cloudflare may process technical data such as IP addresses in other countries.

Your rights and complaints

You can ask to see, correct or delete personal information we hold about you, or to close an organisation account, through our contact page. We aim to respond within 30 days and may need to confirm who you are first. If you are not happy with our answer, in Australia you can also contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au.

Children and families

opencare.help is family-friendly and meant for a general audience. It is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you are a parent or guardian and think a child has given us personal information, please contact us and we will delete it.

Google advertising, cookies and your choices

No display advertising (such as Google AdSense) is shown on this site today. If we add Google advertising in future, Google and other third-party vendors may use cookies, web beacons or similar identifiers to serve and measure ads, including ads based on your prior visits to this and other websites. You can manage personalised Google ads at adssettings.google.com, opt out of some interest-based advertising at www.aboutads.info, and read how Google uses information for advertising at policies.google.com/technologies/ads. These controls do not necessarily stop all ads or all cookies. If we add ads, we will update this page before they start and ask for consent where the law requires it.

Contact us

For privacy questions or requests, use our contact page. You can also email support [at] opencare.help.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. The latest version is always on this page, with the date at the top.