Cookies

Cookies are small text files that may be placed on your computer when you visit a website. They are widely used to make websites work and to make them more efficient. Cookies also help website owners understand how you use the site so that they can make it easier to find what you’re looking for.

Find out how to manage cookies on the Information Commissioner’s Office website.

Our privacy statement applies to our use of cookies.

How we use cookies on www.kentfostering.co.uk

Analytics cookies

We use Google Analytics and Hotjar to understand how you use our website and to gather feedback, so we can improve it.

Google

We use Google Analytics to understand how people find and use our website. We have linked Google Analytics to Google Ads to help us measure the effectiveness of some of our online advertising. We have disabled personalised advertising. Data is used solely for analytics, reporting and campaign measurement purposes.

Information collected may include:

the pages you visit on kent.gov.uk
the time you spend on each page
how you got to the site
what you click on while you’re visiting the site
whether a visit resulted from a Google advertisement.

Google may retain user and event data for up to 14 months. We don’t collect or store your personal information (for example your name or address) so we can’t identify who you are. We don’t allow Google to use or share our analytics data.

Read Google's overview of privacy and safeguarding data and find out how you can opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites.

Google Analytics cookies we use on kentfostering.co.uk:

Name	Purpose	Expires
_ga	Used to distinguish users.	2 years
_gid	Used to distinguish users.	24 hours
_gat	Used to throttle request rate.	1 minute
AMP_TOKEN	Contains a token that can be used to retrieve a Client ID from AMP Client ID service. Other possible values indicate opt-out, inflight request or an error retrieving a Client ID from AMP Client ID service.	30 seconds to 1 year
_gac_<property-id>	Contains campaign related information for the user.	90 days
_ga_<container-id>	Used to persist session state.	90 days
_gac_gb_<container-id>	Contains campaign related information.	90 days

Microsoft Clarity

We use Microsoft Clarity to help us understand how users interact with the website. We do this using behavioural metrics, heatmaps, and session replays provided by Microsoft Clarity to help us improve our website.

In order to do this, Microsoft Clarity uses cookies and related technologies to collect information about the user and their visit to our website.

You can find out more about the cookies Microsoft Clarity uses on their website.

Microsoft collects or receives personal data from you to provide Microsoft Advertising. For more information about how Microsoft collects and uses your data, visit the Microsoft Privacy Statement.

You can control Microsoft’s use of your data for personalised advertising from Microsoft by visiting their opt-out page.

You can access and clear some of your data through the Microsoft privacy dashboard.

Hotjar

We sometimes run studies using Hotjar, which is a tool that helps us understand how users interact with the website.

The technology gives us information such as how much time users spend on a page, and what they choose to click on so that we can see what’s working well and what isn’t. We use this information to make improvements to the site to help users find what they’re looking for as easily as possible. We also use Hotjar to get feedback from users.

Hotjar uses cookies and other technologies to collect information on the user such as their:

behaviour
device type
IP addresses (stored anonymously)
screen size
browser
geographic location (country only)
preferred language.

Hotjar stores this information in a pseudonymized user profile. Neither Hotjar nor we will ever use this information to identify individual users or to match it with further data on an individual user.

Hotjar uses the following cookies on our website:

Name	Purpose	Expires
_hjSessionUser{site_id}	Hotjar cookie that is set when a user first lands on a page with the Hotjar script. It is used to persist the Hotjar User ID, unique to that site on the browser. This ensures that behavior in subsequent visits to the same site will be attributed to the same user ID.	365 days
_hjSession{site_id}	A cookie that holds the current session data. This ensues that subsequent requests within the session window will be attributed to the same Hotjar session.	30 minutes
_hjClosedSurveyInvites	Hotjar cookie that is set once a user interacts with an External Link Survey invitation modal. It is used to ensure that the same invite does not reappear if it has already been shown.	365 days
_hjDonePolls	Hotjar cookie that is set once a user completes a survey using the On-site Survey widget. It is used to ensure that the same survey does not reappear if it has already been filled in.	365 days
_hjMinimizedPolls	Hotjar cookie that is set once a user minimizes an On-site Survey widget. It is used to ensure that the widget stays minimized when the user navigates through your site.	365 days
_hjShownFeedbackMessage	Hotjar cookie that is set when a user minimizes or completes Incoming Feedback. This is done so that the Incoming Feedback will load as minimized immediately if the user navigates to another page where it is set to show.	365 days
_hjSessionTooLarge	Causes Hotjar to stop collecting data if a session becomes too large. This is determined automatically by a signal from the WebSocket server if the session size exceeds the limit.	Session
_hjSessionRejected	If present, this cookie will be set to '1' for the duration of a user's session, if Hotjar rejected the session from connecting to our WebSocket due to server overload. This cookie is only applied in extremely rare situations to prevent severe performance issues.	Session
_hjSessionResumed	A cookie that is set when a session or recording is reconnected to Hotjar servers after a break in connection.	Session
_hjid	Hotjar cookie that is set when the customer first lands on a page with the Hotjar script. It is used to persist the Hotjar User ID, unique to that site on the browser. This ensures that behavior in subsequent visits to the same site will be attributed to the same user ID.	365 days
_hjRecordingLastActivity	This should be found in Session storage (as opposed to cookies). This gets updated when a user recording starts and when data is sent through the WebSocket (the user performs an action that Hotjar records).	Session
_hjTLDTest	When the Hotjar script executes we try to determine the most generic cookie path we should use, instead of the page hostname. This is done so that cookies can be shared across subdomains (where applicable). To determine this, we try to store the _hjTLDTest cookie for different URL substring alternatives until it fails. After this check, the cookie is removed.	Session
_hjUserAttributesHash	This cookie stores User Attributes which are sent through the Hotjar Identify API, whenever the user is not in the sample. Collected attributes will only be saved to Hotjar servers if the user interacts with a Hotjar Feedback tool, but the cookie will be used regardless of whether a Feedback tool is present.	Session
_hjLocalStorageTest	This cookie is used to check if the Hotjar Tracking Script can use local storage. If it can, a value of 1 is set in this cookie. The data stored in_hjLocalStorageTest has no expiration time, but it is deleted almost immediately after it is created.	Under 100ms
_hjIncludedInPageviewSample	This cookie is set to let Hotjar know whether that user is included in the data sampling defined by your site's pageview limit.	30 minutes
_hjIncludedInSessionSample	This cookie is set to let Hotjar know whether that user is included in the data sampling defined by your site's daily session limit.	30 minutes
_hjAbsoluteSessionInProgress	This cookie is used to detect the first pageview session of a user. This is a true or false flag set by the cookie.	30 Minutes
_hjFirstSeen	This is set to identify a new user’s first session. It stores a true or false value, indicating whether this was the first time Hotjar saw this user. It is used by Recording filters to identify new user sessions.	Session
_hjViewportId	This stores information about the user viewport such as size and dimensions.	Session
_hjRecordingEnabled	This is added when a recording starts and is read when the recording module is initialized to see if the user is already in a recording in a particular session.	Session

Find out how Hotjar manages data for more information. You can stop Hotjar from collecting your data by opting out on their website.

Functional cookies

We use functional cookies so you can watch embedded videos on our website.

YouTube

We embed YouTube videos so that you can watch them on our website. We use YouTube’s Privacy Enhanced Mode which means that YouTube will not store personally-identifiable cookie information when you watch their videos on our web pages.

YouTube uses the following cookies on our website:

Name	Purpose	Expires
PREF*	Stores information such as a user’s preferred page configuration and playback preferences like autoplay, shuffle content, and player size.	After 8 months
YSC	Used by YouTube to remember user input and associate a user’s actions.	Session
VISITOR INFO1 LIVE	Used to remember your preferences and is also used to detect and resolve problems with the service.	After 8 months

For more information visit the YouTube Privacy and Safety Centre.

Vimeo

We use Vimeo’s embeddable video player to show video content on some pages of our website. This player uses cookies that Vimeo consider to be essential to the video player experience.

We have enabled the DNT (do not track) parameter on all embedded Vimeo videos on our website, which stops the player from tracking any session data, including all cookies and analytics. This has the same effect as enabling a Do Not Track setting in your browser.

For more information read the Vimeo cookie policy.

Strictly necessary cookies

These cookies are needed to make our website work.

Our cookie management solution

You may see a modal window when you visit our website, to let you know that we would like to use cookies and to ask for your consent. We call this our 'cookie management solution'.

We use the following cookies on our website:

Name	Purpose	Expires
cookie-management-preferences-set	Lets us know that you have saved your cookie preferences.	90 days
cookie-management-status	Saves your cookie preferences.	90 days

Squiz Matrix

We use Squiz Matrix to manage the content on our website.

We use the following cookies on our website:

Name	Purpose	Expires
_cf_bm	This allows us to protect the site from malicious traffic.	1 hour
dxp-sessionid	This helps us remember you as you navigate the site.	1 hour
SQ_SYSTEM_SESSION	This allows the site to differentiate between user visits to make the website work.	Session
SimpleSAMLAuthToken	This cookie is used to remember your logged in status.	Session
SimpleSAMLSessionID	This cookie is used to remember your logged in status.	Session
SSOredirect	Allows us to redirect you to the page you were on before logging in.	Session
AWSALB	Used for load balancing.	1 week
AWSALBCORS	Used for load balancing.	1 week

Changing your cookie settings

If you no longer want this website to use non-essential cookies when you visit, you can manage your cookie preferences using the button below. However, this may not necessarily remove any unexpired cookies we have set. You'll need to reload any open pages for the changes to fully take effect.

There are several ways you can manage or delete cookies depending on which browser you used when you visited our website. Find out how to manage cookies on popular browsers:

To find information relating to other browsers, visit the browser developer's website.

Session cookies are only stored temporarily and expire once you close your browser.

To find out more about cookies, visit the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) website.

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