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💬 Community Q&A - Safeguarding at The Mix

JustV

We've got a Community Q&A about something we're often asked about - Safeguarding

Topic
How we safeguard you at The Mix. You can ask questions about all of our services - these discussion boards, group chat, and 1-2-1 services like the helpline and counselling.

Where?
Post your questions below!

If you'd like to ask your question anonymously, click here and a staff member will post your question on your behalf. Keep an eye on this thread to see the answer.

When?
Ask your questions now and they will be answered within a few days. Unlike other Q&A's, this will be ongoing and we'll keep answering your questions for as long as you ask them.

Who are the experts?
@Liidia and @Joe, The Mix's resident safeguarding guru's!

📝 Note: this isn't a support thread
If you'd like to get some support with anything you're thinking or feeling, head over to Get Support and start your own discussion where everyone can support you.

More info below ⤵

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What is safeguarding?
Safeguarding describes how we keep all of you safe while you use our services.

That means keeping you safe as an individual and making sure our services are safe overall.

'Safe' can mean keeping you safe from trolls or other unfriendly characters, keeping you safe if you or another member is at risk of harm, deleting triggering content, and much more.

Who are the experts?

Liidia wrote:

Hi I'm Lidia (she/her) I'm a part of the Safeguarding Steering Group and the Service Innovators Committee at The Mix. When I'm not doing my degree, in my spare time I love being creative and baking as well as going for walks.

Joe wrote:

I'm passionate about supporting young people to keep themselves safe and to have their voices heard on safeguarding practices. At The Mix, my main role is overseeing our safeguarding practices. In my downtime, I'm a massive geek (RPGs, games and comics), but also equally happy in wild space chancing on butterflies.

Is there anything I can't ask?
We won't discuss real situations involving real people for privacy reasons, and we can't comment on other support services. You can ask questions on pretty much everything else.

If we don't know the answer to your question, we'll be honest and say that. We might be able to go away and research your question or point you in the direction of someone else who knows the answer.

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Comments

JJLemon18

Hi. Thank you so much for this Q&A!
I have a question to ask that I had on my mind for a long time now. I'm genuinely curious.

If someone posts something worrying, like they are in danger of serious harm. What is the process of helping such person?
For example if I post something here on the boards that sounds like I'm in danger, what will happen next?

Kindest regards,
Jakub

JustV

Thanks @JJLemon18! We have seen this - your question has quite a long answer so we're just formulating it as a team before we get back to you.

Great thing to ask.

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JJLemon18

Thank you @Mike Don't worry about it, you mentioned it takes a few days to answer. Plus I'm not going anywhere

Aoife

Thanks so much for all of your questions so far everyone.

Here is the first answer from @Liidia and @Joe to the question from @JJLemon18

JJLemon18 wrote: »

If someone posts something worrying, like they are in danger of serious harm. What is the process of helping such person? For example if I post something here on the boards that sounds like I'm in danger, what will happen next?

Thank you Jakub.

The first thing the Community staff would try to do would be to reach out to the person to explore more about the danger while listening to you and offering information on places you can reach out to for support. The places for support will be based on the information we have and the nature of the danger. If we thought it was needed then, we would encourage the person to call 101 or 999 themselves or contact a service like our Crisis Message or Papyrus.

We would be try to explore, what the cause of the danger is? The timescale of the danger? Who will be effected by the danger? How likely the danger will be to happen?

Using the information we gain we would try to work out if:

1. We believe your life, or someone else’s, is in danger
2. We believe you are currently hurting someone else
3. You’re being seriously harmed by someone in a position of trust who is able to hurt other young people, like a teacher, religious leader, sports coach, police officer or doctor

If we did believe any of the above was true then we would be looking to contact the emergency services. More information can be found on this over on our website here: https://www.themix.org.uk/about-us/confidentiality

If the person didn’t reply to DMs, didn’t want to share more information or where didn’t have the full information, then would have to make a decision based on the information we had and what we didn’t know. Here at The Mix we always make decisions on the “side of life”, basically if we don’t know or are unsure we would do something to protect a life instead of the confidentially.

If we didn’t think the danger was enough to contact emergency services we would still DM the person and talk to them about getting the support they need to keep safe.

With the post itself, on the discussion boards, we may remove or edit this to avoid any triggers or worry by others. In group chat, the message may be deleted and the person may be removed from the session if the space isn't suitable for them in that moment. We always want to make sure someone is using services that are trained to support someone who may be in crisis such as Crisis Messenger, Samaritans or Papyrus so they can get the best support to help them stay safe.

We really want to highlight it is okay to express emotions and what going on with you on the Community. We would only look to contact emergency services if we thought someone was is immediate danger (we count that as 3 days before or after the danger is shared here at The Mix.). This is because we truly do care all those that use the Community and all young people in general so want to do what we can to support your mental health and wellbeing.

Aoife

Past User wrote: »

I haves a questioneeeeeee when it comes to breaking confidentiality why is it varied

Great question thank you so much for sharing @Past User. Can you share with us more about what you mean by varied? We'll then get this over to @Liidia and @Joe to answer your question

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JJLemon18

Thank you @Liidia and @Joe for taking the time to answer my question! Also thank you to the team for doing your part too! I really appreciate it!

Joe

Past User wrote: »

@Aife I mean like the helpline call for self harm yet u guys say only for suicidal thoughts

Sorry for the delay in our reply. Bank Holidays and staff leave have slowed down our replying time.

Across all services at the Mix (Helpline, Boards, Chat and Counselling) will open up confidential to another service that can help when in contact with you if:

1. We believe your life, or someone else’s, is in danger
2. We believe you are currently hurting someone else
3. You’re being seriously harmed by someone in a position of trust who is able to hurt other young people, like a teacher, religious leader, sports coach, police officer or doctor

More information can be found on this over on our website here: https://www.themix.org.uk/about-us/confidentiality

We take every case individually and will do a risk assessment (ask questions to find out how bad the risk is) then based on that information we compare that to those three points above. If we believe any of the three is true then we will be contacting other organisations to help that you.

It’s not the case that we have different rules for the different services. Also there is no blanket rule for self-harm or suicidal thoughts for when we do open up confidentiality. It all depends on the three points above for all of our service.

It also worth noting that a risk you contact us about is rarely in isolation, so there could be multiple risks involved such as self-harm and suicide. We will risk assess how these interact with each other for that you while comparing them to the three key points.

JustV

Just to add to what @Joe said above @Past User, there may be times where someone has self-harmed in a way that gives us enough concern for their safety for us to involve emergency services, even if they had no suicidal intent when they did it.

There may also be times where we don't have the full picture of someone's situation, and the information we do have gives us reason to believe they might not be safe. In those cases, we may involve emergency services just to be on the safe side.

So it could look like our reasons for calling emergency services vary, but when you get down to the specifics of individual situations, there tend to be details that change the risk level.

Additionally, The Mix services are a human operation, which means there will always be some variance in how we evaluate these things, but we try to be as consistent as possible.

(happy to clarify anything if these answers don't make sense!)

JustV

We also have our first anonymous question:

I wanted to know how the mix keeps its volunteers safe ? It must be tough having to make decisions wether to break confidentiality, it must be quite worrying too. And it must be difficult helping and listening to us all. Im sure the volunteers are good at looking after themselves and separating things in their minds, but even super strong people can struggle. So how does the mix look after the wellbeing of its volunteers and check theyre ok? Or do you just look after eachother like a big family?

JustV

We're working on an answer to the above question - sorry it's taking so long! You can blame me for being unwell for a few days. 😷

Joe

Mike wrote: »

We also have our first anonymous question:

I wanted to know how the mix keeps its volunteers safe ? It must be tough having to make decisions wether to break confidentiality, it must be quite worrying too. And it must be difficult helping and listening to us all. Im sure the volunteers are good at looking after themselves and separating things in their minds, but even super strong people can struggle. So how does the mix look after the wellbeing of its volunteers and check theyre ok? Or do you just look after eachother like a big family?

Thank you for this question. Sorry for the delay in answering. We are going to answer it in a few parts from our different perspectives:

As part of our volunteer training, we include how we do safeguarding here at The Mix. This is so our volunteers feel confident in our process and understand how our safeguarding works.

When a volunteer is on-shift, they can always call our On Call team. Our On Call team supports volunteers with decisions that need to be made such as contacting emergency services, and they can chat through anything that will help the volunteer. We also offer volunteers access to our Employee Assistance Programme which includes free short term counselling.

Additionally, we create a culture where discussions about safeguarding cases is encouraged, and that includes challenging decisions that are made. Another key part of that culture is the importance of self-care and being able to vent when needed.

It’s a bit of both, we do checking in and we look other each other as one big family.

JustV

Just a few additions to what @Joe said above.

There are people you can't see who help out behind the scenes. Our supervisors support moderators with anything difficult and make sure they have a space to offload if they need to. Our more experienced moderators train up our newer moderators, and we often chat through difficult moderation decisions as a team rather than making those calls individually.

We also encourage moderators to take time off when they need it, and we have some rules in place to make sure nobody is doing too much. Burnout and vicarious trauma are common issues for people who work in emotional support and moderation, and we're always doing our best to watch out for that and make sure everyone is healthy.

Moderators also have spaces to chat amongst themselves (including social spaces), and ways to reach the staff team directly with anything on their mind. We're pretty well connected to each other which helps create a supportive space.

Former Member

I can offer a volunteer perspective.

When The Mix check in with me if I've been away or MIA, I always get a check in message from staff. Super informal and just to check if I'm okay. Because The Mix is so good at talking about wellbeing, mental health, cultural or financial things, they create a safe space to be honest about whatever might be going on for without contributing to stigma.

What you said about us being one big family is truly accurate! I sing The Mix's praises to everyone - family, friends, anyone.

Former Member

@Liidia awh

that sounds awesome, the mix is definitely the best

*imagines liidia actually singing the mixs praises*

Former Member

Let's say someone reports my post, say for example it could be about TW! Abuse or neglect. How would they deal with this.

JustV

Angel wrote: »

Let's say someone reports my post, say for example it could be about TW! Abuse or neglect. How would they deal with this.

Good question @Angel. As this is about moderation I'm happy to answer.

When people report heavy posts (e.g. about abuse), it tends to be for these reasons:

Breaks the guidelines

May need a trigger warning

I'm worried about this person

For those first two reasons, the moderator who picks up the report will check your post. They'll see if it needs a trigger warning and add one if it does, and they might edit or delete the post if it breaks the community guidelines. We'll send you a DM if any changes are made.

For the third reason (if someone is worried about you), we'll also look to see if you're in crisis, or in rare cases, whether your life might be at risk. If we think you might benefit from some additional support we'll drop you a DM with some signposts, maybe some questions about how you're feeling, etc.

JustV

Oh, and for trickier situations, the mods might discuss your post as a team.

Former Member

What if someone reported my post on my profile, because sometimes people can see your post on your profile.

JustV

It's the same process @Angel.