Peer Talk Disclaimer
If you are in immediate danger to your self or at the hands of another, Ask For Jake strongly recommends you seek medical and/or legal support and protection. Ask For Jake cannot hold in confidentiality any information on the abuse or physical danger of any individual, particularly minors. We are legally obligated to notify law enforcement where the law has been broken and a persons physical wellbeing is in danger.
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Peer Talk is 1 to 1 peer non-professional, non counselling online video call and messaging support. This is not professional counselling, nor should it be a substitute to one. At all times wherever possible Ask For Jake always recommends seeking relevant professional support. Peer Talk is strictly people helping people, for those who want confidential, friendly and private conversations.
Peer Talk is 1 to 1. You and an Ask for Jake volunteer. At all times an Ask For Jake supervisor will be on call ready to join when requested to do so. At any time you may request a supervisor to be on the call with you and the volunteer, either before the call is made or during the call. At anytime the volunteer may call in the supervisor for support. This will not be unannounced the volunteer will state to you that they are calling in the supervisor and stating the reasons why.
Peer Talk operates in 2 age groups: Peer Talk (25+) and Peer Talk Youth (under 25). If you are under 16 we require parental consent and a video recording of the conversation will take place. We will endeavour to find a volunteer that fits within your age bracket at your request but this cannot be guaranteed. We will endeavour to find a male or female volunteer at your request but this cannot be guaranteed. If the nature of your call merits any of the above preferences this may delay the date and time a call can be made unless you are happy carrying on in a messenger chat.
Our safeguarding rules dictates that we must take notes of the conversation. This is for our protection and yours. It will also act as a reference should you choose to call again, a volunteer will reference the previous conversations so they know what was discussed and any action points on yours or our parts that may have been taken. Your full name will never be referenced in the report, never printed our never shared outside of Ask For Jake’s Peer Talk support group unless we are legally obligated to do so. Your conversation will be referenced by initials and date of birth example: wms22041980. It will be saved on our secured drives and the file password protected. You at any time have the right to request access to that file which we will release within 30 days of the request. Data will be held for a maximum of 1 year of last recorded engagement.
Privacy: We will respect and uphold your privacy to very high standards and request that you do so for our volunteers as well. Our volunteers will not friend request you on social media, engage, like or follow you on any platform. We request that you offer the same privacy to our volunteers. Our volunteers will not engage with you in public and discuss with you outside of our safeguard parameters your personal matters. This doesn’t mean they may not wave or say hi politely, we just ask that both parties respect each other’s personal space. With that being said we understand that we live in a small community and that you may already know each other and are possibly known to each other, share the same acquaintances and through natural progression and interactions you may naturally become friends without any influence by Peer Talk. Great! Because that is what life is about; connecting and bonding with peers.
Peer Talk is a safe place. As such we will not tolerate any abuse, verbally, or physical threats. If the volunteer feels it necessary to do so based on any violation of this policy, they will immediately inform you that the call is immediately ending. Depending on the situation they have the right to video record the conversation for legal purposes and will inform you immediately when they do. They will then remove you from the conversation, log the incident and inform their supervisor.
At any point during the call if the volunteer feels that you may be under the influence of drugs or alcohol or if you state you are, they will call in the supervisor. This will likely result in the termination of the call as we feel it’s inappropriate to carry on any further under any state of substance abuse. In this instance we will and do encourage you to come back again when you are not under the influence.