Cookies and how they benefit you
Our website uses cookies, as almost all websites do, to help provide you with the best experience we can. Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer or mobile phone when you browse websites
Our cookies help us:
- Make our website work as you’d expect
- Remember your settings during and between visits
- Improve the speed/security of the site
- Allow you to share pages with social networks like Facebook
- Continuously improve our website for you
Some cookies are essential (others are not)
Some cookies we use on our website are essential, for example, to let us know that it is you when you navigate through the different pages on our website, or to allow our donation page to work. With these essential cookies we do not need your permission to use them, however, with other cookies such as those used by social media companies you must give us your consent before they can be used.
We obtain your permission via our cookie banner which is presented when you first land on our site. Some cookies are classed as non-essential but will enhance your use experience, you can therefore change your cookie choices at any time by clicking on the cookie icon in the bottom right hand corner.
How long do cookies last?
When a web server sends a cookie, it asks your browser to keep that particular cookie until a certain date and time. These dates can be:
- Some date in the future – Might be a few minutes or a few hours from now (to track something like your shopping cart in an online store). The cookie might expire many years in the future, to keep track of your browser for a long time
- When you close your browser – Called a session cookie, the next time you start your browser these will have vanished
- Some date in the past – This is how the server asks a browser to remove a previously-stored cookie
Our own cookies
We use cookies to make our website work including:
- Remembering if you have accepted our terms and conditions
There is no way to prevent these cookies being set other than to not use our site.
Site improvement cookies
We regularly test new designs or site features on our sites. We may do this by showing slightly different versions of our websites to different people and anonymously monitoring how our site visitors respond to these different versions. Ultimately this helps us to offer you a better website experience.
Anonymous visitor statistics cookies
We use cookies to compile visitor statistics such as how many people have visited our website, what type of technology they are using, how long they spend on the site, what page they look at, etc. This helps us to continuously improve our website. These analytics programs also tell us, on an anonymous basis, how people reached this site (e.g. from a search engine) and whether they have been here before, helping us to develop our services for you. Our site uses the following analytics programs:
- Google Analytics
Third party functions
Our site, like most websites, includes functionality provided by third parties. A common example is an embedded YouTube video.
Disabling these cookies will likely break the functions offered by these third parties.
Social website cookies
The privacy implications on this will vary from social network to social network and will be dependent on the privacy settings you have chosen on these networks.
Cookies we use;
| Cookie Type | Originator | Name | Purpose / More Info | Cookie Duration |
| First Party | WordPress | wordpress_test_cookie | Tests that the browser accepts cookies. | Session |
| First Party | WordPress (admin) | wordpress_ | Various cookies are used when in admin mode to allow dashboard to function. | 1 month, 1 year |
| First Party | WordPress (admin) | wordpress_logged_in_ | Cookie indicates when you’re logged in, and who you are (hashed or encrypted). | Session |
| First Party | WordPress (admin) | wp-settings-{time}-[UID] | Cookie sets a date time and user ID. | 1 year |
| First Party | WordPress (admin) | Various (admin) | Various cookies are used when in admin mode. | Various |
| Third Party | Antivirus software (unknown) | Unknown | Helps to detect malicious visitors to the site to protect both Childlife and users. | Unknown |
| Third Party | Google Analytics | _ga, _utma, _utmb, _utmc, _utmz | Tracks user behavior for analytics, such as unique visitors, page views, session status, and referral sources. | Various (1 year, session, etc.) |
| First Party | Consent Management | CookieControl | Manages user’s cookie consent preferences. | 90 days |
| First Party | User Tracking | _cc_id | Tracks user preferences or consent status. | 1 year |
| First Party | User Session/Device ID | panoramaId | Unique identifier for user sessions or device tracking. | 1 year |
| First Party | User Session/Device ID | panoramaIdType, panoramaId_expiry | Identifies device type for tracking; expiry timestamp. | Various |
| Third Party | ShareThis | __stid, __stidv | Used for social sharing analytics and tracking user interactions. | 2 years |
| Third Party | ShareThis | pxcelBcnLcy, pxcelPage_default_c010 | Used for social sharing analytics and tracking page interactions. | Various |
Turning Cookies off/Opting Out of Cookies
If you do not accept non-essential cookies they will not work, however, you can also switch cookies off by adjusting your browser settings to stop it from accepting certain cookies, for example, by using the Google Analytics opt-out browser add on. Doing so, however, will likely limit the functionality of ours and a large proportion of the world’s websites as cookies are a standard part of most modern websites.
It may be that your concerns around cookies relate to so called “spyware”. Rather than switching off cookies in your browser you may find that anti-spyware software achieves the same objective by automatically deleting cookies considered to be invasive.
Notification of change of Privacy and cookie policy
We keep our privacy and cookie policies under regular review and we will place any updates on this webpage. Your continued use of any of our websites after changes are posted constitutes your acceptance of these Terms and Conditions.
Your acceptance of this policy
By using our sites or social media pages, you consent to our collection and use of information in accordance with this policy. If you don’t agree to this policy, please don’t use our sites or social media pages.
How to contact us
If you wish to talk to use about anything in the policy or the information we hold about you please contact us:
by telephone: 01252 628072
or by email: info@childlife.org.uk
or by post: Childlife, Westmead House, Westmead, Farnborough, Hampshire, GU14 7LP.
Last updated: July 2025