Birth Workers Connect Terms of Use
Last Updated: November 17, 2021
For Everyone:
Expectant families pay nothing to use BirthWorkersConnect, are not subject to any third party tracking, and do not need to register.
Birth workers may create a birth worker profile at no cost, but publishing it is an annual paid marketing service on a modest sliding scale from $15 to $50 USD per year. This also applies to group profiles. Birth workers may be members of any number of group profiles at no additional cost.
BirthWorkersConnect also offers first-party (self-hosted) advertisements at a rate of $10/month. Currently this is only for Childbirth Education Class Listings, but stay tuned for news on this front.
Only birth workers, managers of birth worker group profiles, and advertisers are required to register for a user account on the Birth Workers Connect website.
Birth worker profiles are for birth birth workers and postpartum birth workers.
Our intention is to be transparent in our policies and business practices. We respect your privacy and track nothing about you other than what is needed to facilitate your use of our service. For example, we save your birth worker search parameters into a browser cookie so you do not need to re-enter them.
This site has no third party ads or tracking software or pixels. No Google Analytics. No Facebook javascript. We now self-host maps. At a software level, we have implemented a strict content security policy specified in every response header, which your browser will use to verify this: nothing other than files from the domain Birth Workers Connect.
The only exception to this policy regarding third party integration is the third party javascript from our two trusted payment processors: Stripe and PayPal. Only birth workers and advertisers will load these third party javascript libraries. Families pay nothing. Our payment integration is intentionally designed to limit our exposure to your payment information: at no time does any person, computer, or software from BirthWorkersConnect have access to your payment information such as your credit card number or the ZIP code you may need to enter to complete the payment. You will be redirected to Stripe to complete a credit card payment, and the PayPal javascript library will create a pop-up browser window to log into your PayPal account and complete the payment.
Birth Workers Connect uses the Amazon Simple Email Service to deliver emails. When we use Amazon Simple Email Service to send you an email, Amazon has visibility to your email address and its record of deliverability and complaints.
For expectant families, nothing on this site is gated behind a registration requirement or paywall.
We share no personal information with anyone ever for any reason, other than when required by law enforcement. We have never been required to do so to date. This sentence is a gag-order canary: its presence verifies that we have never been subject to a gag order prohibiting us from disclosing we released information under duress. If you observe its absence you may infer the opposite.
We publish limited paid first-party advertisements such as advertisements for childbirth education classes.
This site uses cookies and your web browser's local storage features to improve your experience. We store the birth worker search parameters such as date, location, etc. in a cookie, and we use your browser's local storage to cache search results so you can enjoy lightning-fast response times.
This site logs information regarding your use of the site, including your browser or user agent's identication sent in its header with requests to our server. This information is only used by Birth Workers Connect staff to diagnose and solve problems with the site, understand and gain insight into site usage, and identify and take action on abuse.
The contact form is for expectant families to contact birth workers who they might want to hire. Use of the contact form for any other purpose is prohibited and will result in moderation actions up to and including banning your use of the site. This includes using the contact form to solicit survey respondents, birth workers using the form to contact other birth workers for business partnerships, and any other use other than attempting to hire a birth worker. Failure to comply will result in actions including blocking your IP address.
If you mark an email from BirthWorkersConnect as spam or your email is returned as undeliverable we will automatically add it to our Do Not Email list and you will never receive another email from us again until you ask to have the block removed or change your email address. This is a requirement of our email service provider.
We actively monitor use of the site for patterns of abuse and take actions to limit its impact. Abuse includes bots and scrapers which disrespect our robots.txt file or are of a high volume, as well as any activity with a disingenous browser user-agent. It also includes creating a birth worker profile for a proposition which is not a birth worker at all, for example prescription drugs. Abusers may receive blank or error pages instead of the requested BirthWorkersConnect page. In rare cases we ban IP addresses. None of this has impacted any legitimate user of the site. It is just a fact of having a site on the internet: over half your traffic will be abuse.
By accessing this web site, you are agreeing to be bound by these web site Terms and Conditions of Use, all applicable laws and regulations, and agree that you are responsible for compliance with any applicable local laws. If you do not agree with any of these terms, you are prohibited from using or accessing this site. The materials contained in this web site are protected by applicable copyright and trade mark law.
The materials on Birth Workers Connect's web site are provided "as is". Birth Workers Connect makes no warranties, expressed or implied, and hereby disclaims and negates all other warranties, including without limitation, implied warranties or conditions of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement of intellectual property or other violation of rights. Further, Birth Workers Connect does not warrant or make any representations concerning the accuracy, likely results, or reliability of the use of the materials on its Internet web site or otherwise relating to such materials or on any sites linked to this site.
In no event shall Birth Workers Connect or its suppliers be liable for any damages (including, without limitation, damages for loss of data or profit, or due to business interruption,) arising out of the use or inability to use the materials on Birth Workers Connect's Internet site, even if Birth Workers Connect or a Birth Workers Connect authorized representative has been notified orally or in writing of the possibility of such damage. Because some jurisdictions do not allow limitations on implied warranties, or limitations of liability for consequential or incidental damages, these limitations may not apply to you.
The materials appearing on Birth Workers Connect's web site could include technical, typographical, or photographic errors. Birth Workers Connect does not warrant that any of the materials on its web site are accurate, complete, or current. Birth Workers Connect may make changes to the materials contained on its web site at any time without notice. Birth Workers Connect does not, however, make any commitment to update the materials.
Birth Workers Connect has not reviewed all of the sites linked to its Internet web site and is not responsible for the contents of any such linked site. The inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement by Birth Workers Connect of the site. Use of any such linked web site is at the user's own risk.
Birth Workers Connect is for birth workers and childbirth educators to promote their services, and for families to find birth workers and childbirth education classes. With the exception of the birth worker availability calendar plugin and iframe interface licensed to specific birth worker professional organizations, you may not use automated methods to scrape, index, or proxy BirthWorkersConnect or its data for your own application, website, or database. The software has features for detecting and preventing these actions.
This site is not for children. Children under the age of 13 years should not use this site, nor should they submit information to the site operators or listed birth workers.
Birth Workers Connect may revise these terms of use for its web site at any time without notice. By using this web site you are agreeing to be bound by the then current version of these Terms and Conditions of Use.
Any claim relating to Birth Workers Connect's web site shall be governed by the laws of the State of Washington without regard to its conflict of law provisions.
Your privacy is very important to us. We take privacy seriously and have a published privacy policy which we encourage you to review.
For the Consumer (expectant families):
Birth Workers Connect does not screen or endorse the birth workers listed on this site.
With the exception of certification certificate images published on the site, Birth Workers Connect does not certify or verify the credentials, experience, cerfications, or qualifications of birth workers listed on this web site. Consumers are advised to independently verify all credentials and conduct interviews with birth workers before hiring them, including contacting certification organizations to verify that certifications are still current.
Birth Workers Connect is not responsible or liable for any adverse or unexpected consequences of hiring a birth worker.
For the Birth Worker:
In 2021 BirthWorkersConnect introduces a new requirement for financial support from all birth workers publishing their profile on the site, including group profiles. There is now a sliding scale fee ranging from $15 to $50 USD per year. Individual birth worker profiles may join as many group profiles as they like at no additional cost.
As a registered birth worker on BirthWorkersConnect, you understand that any information you enter into your account or birth worker profile will be published to the public on the Internet. The only exception to this is your email address, which is never published, shared, sold, or bartered. If you don't want your phone number on the internet, don't put it on your birth worker profile. It is an optional field.
Birth worker search results are sorted to display the birth workers who have most recently updated their availability calendar first. Accurate availability information is critical to BirthWorkersConnect's unique value to the consumer: being able to see a list of birth workers serving their area who are available on the date needed.
BirthWorkersConnect staff will contact you periodically by email with site updates and requests for your input on site design and features. You will also receive confirmation emails for certain transactions on the site such as payment confirmation emails for any contributions to BirthWorkersConnect. Accepting these emails, which are generally transactional in nature, is a condition of publishing a profile on the site. Requests to unsubscribe will result in deactivation of your profile, which you may reactivate any time you like as long as you accept that we will periodically contact you regarding site developments and your use of the site.
You will only post photos you own or are licensed to use. You agree not to post or transmit any unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, profane, hateful, racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable material of any kind, including, but not limited to, any material which encourages conduct that would constitute a criminal offense, violate the rights of others, or otherwise violate any applicable local, state, national or international law. You will be responsible for, and indemnify and hold harmless Birth Workers Connect and its agents and representatives against any claim arising from any material that you post or transmit.
Currently, Birth Workers Connect is targeted only at the US and Canada.
Anyone may enter a testimonial of their experience working with any birth worker listed on BirthWorkersConnect. Testimonials can only be removed from a birth worker’s profile by written request by the client who made the testimonial. birth workers should make every effort to resolve conflicts with their clients directly and using the ombudsman resources of their certifying organization. If after repeated attempts at rectifying the relationship with your client, you may post a rebuttal to the testimonial or ask that your birth worker profile be de-activated from Birth Workers Connect, which will also result in all of your testimonials disappearing from the site. You may reactivate your profile at any time in the future.
We are not responsible for and have no influence over how search engines and archivers such as Google, Bing, and the Internet Archive cache, archive and continue to publish information which you may have updated or removed from Birth Workers Connect.
The site will undergo periodic maintenance that will take the site offline (unavailable). Maintenance downtime is expected to be less than one hour per month maximum, with only a few instances of maintenance downtime per year. If extended downtime is required, registered birth workers will be notified via email. BirthWorkersConnect is not hosted on redundant servers, so a hardware or general network failure will result in unplanned downtime of an indeterminate duration while backups are restored.
We will listen to you and continue to improve the site over time. We can't implement all of your suggestions, but we are committed to this being a site tailored to the needs of the expectant families it serves.