Who we are
CrecheWorks is owned and operated by Decoded Lemon (Pty) Ltd, a company registered in South Africa, which provides management software to early childhood development centres. Where your child attends a centre, that centre is the responsible party for your child's information and Decoded Lemon (Pty) Ltd is its operator, as those terms are used in the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA).
In plain terms: the centre decides what is collected about your child and why. We hold it on their behalf, and we do not use it for anything they have not asked us to do.
What we hold
- Child records: name, date of birth, photograph, class and enrolment details.
- Health information: allergies, chronic conditions, medication and medical aid details. POPIA treats this as special personal information and we process it only to keep your child safe at the centre.
- Guardian and authorised collector details, including identity numbers.
- Attendance, daily reports, incident records and, where applicable, invoices.
- Staff records held by the centre as an employer.
Who can see it
Access is restricted by role and enforced by the database itself, not only by the interface. Parents see their own children. Teachers see the children in their classes. Only the centre's owner and administrators see staff, financial and disciplinary records. Access to health, pay and disciplinary records is logged.
Consent
Your centre records your consent at enrolment for processing your child's information, for photographs used inside the app, and separately for any photographs used in marketing. You may withdraw any consent at any time by telling your centre; withdrawing photograph consent removes your child from shared photographs going forward.
Where it is stored
Information is encrypted in transit and at rest. Identity numbers are additionally encrypted before they are stored. Copies of records may be held on centre staff devices so that registers and daily reports work without a network connection; those copies are limited to the records that staff member is entitled to see.
Your rights
You may ask your centre for a copy of the information held about you and your child, ask for it to be corrected, or ask for it to be deleted where the centre is not required by law to keep it. Contact your centre in the first instance. You may also complain to the Information Regulator of South Africa.
Contact
Decoded Lemon (Pty) Ltd is the operator of CrecheWorks and holds the role of information officer as required by POPIA.
If your child attends a centre, please contact the centre first — they hold the record and can act on it fastest. You may complain to the Information Regulator of South Africa at any time.