Youth Homes, Inc. is strongly committed to protecting the privacy of its constituents, including anyone who uses/visits this Web site, products or services.

Who We Are
Youth Homes, Inc. (YHI) is a (501(c) 3) not-for-profit organization, incorporated in the state of North Carolina.  We are members of the North Carolina – Children and Family Services Association.  As a family service organization serving Mecklenburg County, we manage a great deal of confidential information for individuals and families.  All YHI staff members are educated in the protection of confidentiality and the handling of confidential information.

YHI uses its Web site for many purposes, including providing you with information about our organization, services and various projects, and accepting financial contributions.  Please note that YHI is registered under the following address: www.youthhomesinc.org. The address of any other nature is not an official YHI site and is not affiliated with our organization.

Information Collection and Usage
YHI is the sole owner of the information collected on this site.  We will not sell, share or rent this information to others in ways different from what is disclosed in this statement.  YHI collects information from users and visitors at several different points on our Web site.  This information is used for internal organization purposes only.  All methods are described below:

Contribution, Foster Parent and Volunteer Forms
Should you choose to make a contribution to Youth Homes, Inc. through our Web site, we will collect information necessary to accept, process and acknowledge your gift.

If you wish to serve as a foster parent, through our Professional Parenting program, or as a volunteer, and you complete the appropriate inquiry forms, we will collect information necessary to follow up with you regarding the next step in the process.

Cookies
A cookie is a piece of data stored on your hard drive that contains information about you.  Usage of a cookie is in no way linked to any personally identifiable information while on our site.  Once you close your browser, the cookie simply terminates.  For example, by setting a cookie on our site, you would not have to log in a password more than once, thereby saving time while on our site.  If you reject the cookie, you may still use our site, but you may be limited in some areas.

Log Files
We use Internet Provider (IP) addresses to analyze trends, administer the site, track movement/activity and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use.  IP addresses are not linked to personally identifiable information.  They may be resolved to identify the name of the organization owning that IP address.

Links
YHI’s site offers links to other sites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of these other sites.  We encourage you to read the privacy statements of all Web sites, especially if that site collects personally identifiable information.  This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this Web site and this organization.

Newsletters
YHI offers downloadable copies of its agency newsletter and annual report.  If you wish to be added to our mailing list, we ask for contact information such as name, mailing address and e-mail address.

Surveys
On occasion, YHI will request information from you via surveys.  Participation in these surveys is completely voluntary, meaning you have a choice in whether to provide this information.  Information requested may include contact information (name and mailing address) and certain demographic information.  Survey information may be for monitoring or improving the use and satisfaction of this site and our services.

Security
This Web site takes every precaution to protect your information.  When you submit sensitive information via the Web site, your information is protected both online and offline.

When our forms ask you to enter sensitive information (such as credit card numbers), the information is encrypted/SSL.  While on a secure page, such as a donation form, the lock icon on the bottom of Web browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer becomes locked, as opposed to unlocked, or open, when you are just ‘surfing’.

While we use SSL encryption to protect sensitive information online, we do everything in our power to protect user-information offline.  All of your information, not only the sensitive information mentioned above, id restricted in our offices.  Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job (for example, a volunteer coordinator, training director, or EAP account manager or database administrator) are granted access to personally identifiable information.  Furthermore, all employees are kept up-to-date on our confidentiality practices.  Finally, the servers where we store personally identifiable information are kept in a secure environment.

If you have any questions about the security of our Web site, please e-mail lstallworth@youthhomesinc.org.

Notification of Changes
We reserve the right to amend this policy as necessary without prior notice.  If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post the changes on our site so you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.  If at any point we decide to use personally identifiable information in a manner different from that stated at the time it was collected, we will notify you via an updated message on our site.  You will have a choice as to whether or not we use your information in this different manner.