SAFEGUARDING POLICY DECEMBER 2023
SOS is fully aware of the need for robust safeguarding measures both internally and externally. Protecting you, your integrity and your confidentiality is paramount.
Our external safeguarding policy covers all of our services and helps to inform you and perhaps guide the choices you make. We are not just talking about your emotional safeguarding, but your physical safeguarding as well (depending upon the service)
If you have any questions about this policy, please email feedback@sossilenceofsuicide.org
We understand that members of the public and any other third parties who come into contact with the charity, its employees, voluntary workers and Trustees have the right to be safeguarded to the best of our ability
Our freephone helpline is open 8pm until midnight Mon-Fri and 4pm – midnight at weekends.
Our frontline staff are fully trained in the handling of a wide variety of complex situations, such as:
*Those presenting as suicidal, with or without an immediate intent
*Those who are self harming
*Those who have an addiction
*Those who are homeless
*Those who are struggling with rehabilitation
*Those with overall poor emotional health
*Calls from children, young people and adults
*Those living in isolation
*Our frontline support staff have some lived experience of challenges in the list above (and beyond the list) including loss to suicide and being bereaved by suicide, making them ideally placed to support you in the way you deserve. Some maybe studying within the field of mental health.
*All of our frontline staff have undergone enhanced DBS checks and are not allowed to support members of the public without a valid certificate
*We will only call 999 when there is an immediate risk to life – either your own, or that of someone else. However, if you refuse to give us your personal information, then we cannot call 999 and would urge you to do this for yourself. We call 999 as we have a duty of care towards you.
*We will always encourage you to speak with your GP if you have not already done so. This should always be your first port of call as your GP can then decide what referrals, medication and/or other support may be best for you.
*We will always encourage you to speak with your out of hours mental health team where this is possible or to call the next day during office hours, subject to you already being on this pathway.
*SOS do not give advice in any situation. We are here to engage with you, in open conversation and through active listening, to walk alongside you through your hardest times
*Our group talking meetings maybe specific to a business, another charity, a place of learning, a retail outlet or simply for members of the public only. Regardless of to whom they are delivered, or where, no member of SOS will breach the confidentiality you expect from us.
*Should further support be needed at the end of group meetings, a member of SOS will stay behind to assist you to the best of their ability.
*There is very little we probably haven’t heard before, so please do not worry, whatever it is you need to talk about, we are here for those difficult conversations
End: December 2023