Terms of Service

These terms are the agreement between you and TO CONFIRM — registered legal entity name and business address (“Ruah”, “we”, “us”) covering your use of the Ruah website and service. By making an account or using Ruah, you agree to them.

Our Privacy Policy explains what we do with your information and is part of this agreement.

• You must be 18 or older.
• You must be able to enter into a contract, and not barred from doing so under any applicable law.
• You must give accurate information about yourself and keep it current.
• Ruah currently serves the Washington, DC area. We may decline or close accounts outside the areas we serve.
• If we have previously removed you from Ruah, you may not make a new account.

Ruah is an introduction service. We help families and caregivers find each other, and our AI coordinator carries the messages back and forth so neither side has to chase the other. That is the whole of what we do.

Specifically, we want to be clear about what we are not:

• We are not an employment agency, staffing agency, or nanny agency. We do not place workers and we do not hire on your behalf.
• We do not employ caregivers. Caregivers you find on Ruah are not our employees, contractors, or agents. If you hire someone, the working relationship is between you and them.
• We do not supervise, direct, or monitor care. We are not present in your home and we do not control how work is performed.
• We do not run background checks. See section 8 for what our verification does and does not cover, and Trust & Safety for how to arrange your own.
• We do not give legal, tax, employment, or immigration advice. Anything we publish about household employment rules is general information to point you in the right direction, not advice about your situation.
• We do not guarantee outcomes. We cannot promise you will find a caregiver, find a job, or that any match will work out.

Deciding who to let into your home, and deciding whose home to work in, is your decision. We can make the introduction and do the legwork; we cannot make that judgment for you.

• Keep your sign-in details to yourself, and tell us if they are compromised.
• One account per person. Do not create an account for someone else or pretend to be someone you are not.
• You are responsible for what happens under your account.
• You can close your account at any time — see section 12.

When you hire someone to work in your home, you are very likely their household employer, with the legal obligations that come with it. Ruah does not take those on for you. Before and after you hire, these are yours:

• Do your own due diligence. Interview, check references, and arrange a background check if you want one. Our verification is not a substitute — see section 8.
• Put it in writing.The District of Columbia’s Domestic Worker Employment Rights Act requires household employers to give domestic workers a written contract, and requires it in the worker’s preferred language. The DC Department of Employment Services publishes an official template at does.dc.gov. Our Trust & Safety page walks through what the law asks for.
• Pay lawfully. Minimum wage, overtime, paid leave, pay records, and household employment taxes are your responsibility.
• Check your insurance.Whether you need workers’ compensation or additional homeowner coverage depends on your situation — ask your insurer.
• Provide a safe workplace and treat the person working in your home lawfully and decently.

TO CONFIRM — counsel to confirm this section states the DC Domestic Worker Employment Rights Act obligations accurately, including who counts as a covered employer, and whether Ruah has any notice duty of its own as a platform that introduces the parties.

• Tell the truth about your experience, certifications, languages, and availability. Families are relying on it.
• You must be legally allowed to work in the United States, and you are responsible for holding any license or certification your work requires.
• Your work agreement is with the family, not with Ruah. Pay, hours, duties, and time off are between you and them. You are entitled to that agreement in writing, in the language you prefer — see section 5.
• Identity documents you upload are used only to verify who you are. They are never shown to families. See our Privacy Policy.
• You choose which jobs to take. Nothing on Ruah obliges you to accept a match, and declining one does not count against you.

Ruah’s coordinator is software that sends messages for you. By using Ruah, you authorize it to contact caregivers or families about your matches, follow up when someone goes quiet, record what people commit to, and report back to you. What that means in practice:

• Its messages are labeled as coming from Ruah, so nobody is misled into thinking a person typed them.
• Commitments it records are real commitments. If it notes that you will reply by Thursday, the other side will be told Thursday, and it will follow up.
• It can be wrong. It is an AI system and it makes mistakes. Read what it tells you before acting on it, and check anything that matters — dates, rates, addresses — directly with the other person.
• You remain responsible for arrangements you make, whether you typed the message yourself or the coordinator sent it for you. If it gets something wrong on your behalf, tell us and tell the other side.

TO CONFIRM — whether a user can decline the AI coordinator and still use Ruah. If not, counsel should confirm that consent to automated messaging in the user’s name is adequately obtained at sign-up rather than only here.

A verified badge on a caregiver means one thing: a member of our team looked at a government-issued ID and a selfie and concluded the person is who they say they are.

It is not:

• a criminal background check;
• a check of driving, child-abuse, or sex-offender registries;
• a verification of references, employment history, or certifications;
• an endorsement, recommendation, or guarantee of anyone’s character, skill, or fitness to care for your children.

Please read Trust & Safety before you hire. It explains what we check, what we do not, and how to arrange a background check yourself.

Ruah does not process payments and charges no fees today. Families and caregivers agree on pay and settle it directly. We are not a party to that arrangement, we do not hold funds, and we cannot recover money for you if something goes wrong.

TO CONFIRM — the fee model at launch. If Ruah will ever charge a fee, take a commission, or process payments, this section needs terms for pricing, refunds, cancellations, and chargebacks written before that launches — not after.

Your profile, requests, messages, and photos stay yours. You give us permission to store them and show them to the people on the platform who need to see them, so the service can work. That permission ends when you delete the content or close your account, except for copies we must keep for legal or safety reasons.

Only post what you have the right to post, and keep it accurate. We may remove content that breaks these terms.

• Lie about who you are, your experience, or your circumstances.
• Harass, threaten, or discriminate against anyone. Discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, familial status, or any other characteristic protected under DC or federal law is not allowed here.
• Use Ruah to arrange anything unlawful, or to endanger a child or a worker.
• Post someone else’s personal information, or share what you learn on Ruah outside it.
• Scrape, copy, or bulk-collect profiles or listings.
• Attempt to break, probe, or work around the security of the service.
• Use the platform to advertise unrelated services or to spam other users.

You can close your account at any time by emailing hello@ruahruah.com. TO CONFIRM — build self-service account deletion, or state plainly that deletion is by email request only.

We can suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, or where we believe someone’s safety is at risk. Where it is reasonable and safe to do so, we will tell you why and give you a chance to respond. The sections that are meant to outlast the account — content permissions we still need, disclaimers, liability limits, and disputes — survive closure.

Ruah is provided as it is. We do not promise the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that the AI coordinator will always get things right.

We do not vouch for any family or caregiver on the platform. We do not verify anything beyond what section 8 describes, and we make no promise about anyone’s conduct, honesty, skill, or safety. Interactions between users are between those users.

To the extent the law allows, we disclaim implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. Some places do not allow that, in which case this section applies as far as it can.

To the extent the law allows, Ruah is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, or consequential damages, or for lost profits or lost opportunities, arising from your use of the service or from your dealings with another user.

TO CONFIRM — the liability cap and its carve-outs. This is the section counsel should spend the most time on, because it is the one that matters if something goes badly wrong in someone’s home. It has been left unwritten rather than filled with a number we have not thought through.

If a claim is brought against us because of how you used Ruah, what you posted, or your relationship with another user, you agree to cover our reasonable costs of dealing with it.

TO CONFIRM — scope of this indemnity, and whether it should be narrower for caregivers than for families given the difference in bargaining position.

Disputes between users: if you have a problem with another user, it is between the two of you. Tell us anyway — we want to know about anything unsafe, and we will act on our side of it.

Disputes with us: email us first. Most things can be sorted out that way.

These terms are governed by the laws of the District of Columbia.

TO CONFIRM — how formal disputes are resolved: courts in the District of Columbia, or arbitration. If arbitration, counsel needs to decide on a class action waiver and whether to keep a small claims carve-out, and to confirm the clause is enforceable against consumers in DC. Nothing has been drafted here on purpose.

We will update these terms as the product changes. When a change is meaningful, we will update the date at the top and tell you through the platform before it takes effect. If you keep using Ruah after that, the new terms apply.

Questions about these terms go to hello@ruahruah.com.

TO CONFIRM — a business contact address and postal address before publication.