Our safeguarding policy

When we are worried about your safety or that you are being hurt either by your own actions or by someone else, we want to help you to find the best way to keep yourself safe.

We'll do this by listening and by talking to you about what you want to do. Most of the time whatever you tell us will stay between you and Samaritans.

However, if we feel that you are unable to make decisions for yourself sometimes we might need to tell someone else what you’ve told us to be able to help you.

This will apply to all children. Under some circumstances it may also apply to adults, if for example, you are not able to make a decision about your own safety because you don’t understand the risks, if you cannot remember the situation you are in, or if you lose consciousness whilst you are on the phone to us.

If you share information with us which identifies a child or adult at risk who is suffering abuse or harm, after discussion with you, we may contact other relevant services.

We can only help in these situations if we have information which identifies you.

In other less urgent situations we may be able to help with other information like:

• First and second name
• Where someone lives
• Where someone works or studies
• Someone’s address
• Someone’s e-mail address
• Someone’s mobile or home phone number
• Someone’s exact location at the time.

It is important to know that you can decide what information you choose to share with us. Even if you have told us this information, it does not mean we will automatically tell someone else.

We would always want to help you to explore your feelings about your situation and to help you make the decisions that are right for you. We will ask you questions when talking to you to help you do this, and to make sure we understand what you are telling us.

If we determine that we do need tell someone else these are of some of the things that might happen:

• Your details may be passed to people who'll be able to get help to you, like the ambulance service
• If you're in immediate danger of being hurt by someone else, we may ask the police to come and check, or do something to make sure that you're safe
• If you’ve told us that a child is in danger, we may need to get them help. Sometimes the only way of doing that will be to contact you and ask you for more details. It may be the police that help us with this
• We might ask social services to arrange to speak to you and see how they might be able to help you.

If you do not share your details with us, we are unable to contact you other than replying to an email you may have sent us.

We take your confidentiality very seriously and will only consider speaking to someone else if we are really worried about what you have told us and we feel that you are unable to make decisions.