Talking to a MiniMentor who is the same age as you could really help if you have a problem. You might be finding it hard to make friends, or maybe someone has started to pick on you. By talking to a MiniMentor either at school or on this website, you can think of ways to sort out your problems.
Looking after your safety is the most important thing to the MiniMentors team. All MiniMentors are trained to tell a trusted adult if they are worried about your safety. On this site, a MiniMentor will tell a MiniMentors counsellor that they are worried about your safety. If a MiniMentors counsellor is very worried about you, they will pass things on to a special group of staff called the Safeguarding Team.
The kinds of things that might make a MiniMentor or MiniMentors’ counsellor worried about your safety might be: if you are being bullied really badly, are being hurt or not looked after properly at home or you are just very upset about your problems. If one of these problems applies to you, we might need to get you even more help, separate from MiniMentors.
What we do if we are worried about your safety
If you tell a MiniMentor or a MiniMentors counsellor about a big problem that you have that means you may not be safe, then MiniMentors staff may have to take some action. The action they may have to take depends, of course, on what the problem is.
Sometimes our counsellors may have to take action by contacting your school or your parent or carer. We will always try and let you know first if we need to do this.
When might action be taken?
Action may need to be taken if we think that you may not be safe at school, at home, online or just because you are very, very upset and might do something to make yourself unsafe.
If you are very upset like this, a MiniMentor or MiniMentors counsellor will chat to you online about how you feel. A counsellor might offer to chat to you maybe once a week to help with how you feel.
If you tell us that an adult is: hurting you (for example, by hitting you), being cruel to you, doing other things which hurt or upset you or is not looking after you properly, a special group of staff that work for MiniMentors will talk about what action they should take. They are called the ‘Safeguarding Team’.
They may tell one of the following groups of people. They may tell a special team in charge of looking after the safety of children near to where you live – this is called the ‘Local Authority Safeguarding Team’. They may tell your school, your parent or carer or in the most serious cases, the police. Whoever has to get involved, will take action to make sure that whatever was making you unsafe will be sorted out. These steps will be followed for anything really, really serious that can’t be sorted out by chatting to someone on this website.
What sort of information might be passed on to other people about me?
The Safeguarding Team may have to pass on information about you if something very serious is happening, for example: someone at home is hurting you or not looking after you properly. In this case, they will pass on a summary of the conversations that you had with a MiniMentor or MiniMentors counsellor. Sometimes a group called the Local Authority Safeguarding Board – or the police – will ask to see exactly what you have said on the site. MiniMentors staff can see what you have said in a general chat or bubble chat by logging-in to a special part of MiniMentors.org.uk.
Who is the Safeguarding Team?
The Safeguarding Team is a special group of staff that work for MiniMentors who have had special training on keeping children and young people safe. This is the main part of their job and they take what they do very seriously.
The Safeguarding Team has lots of meetings to talk about how to look after young people in the best way. They make sure that information about young people is not shared with other people – unless they have to tell someone outside of the Safeguarding Team, for example your school or parent or carer.
How is information recorded about me?
If a MiniMentors’ Counsellor is worried about your safety, they will write down what has happened in their notes for that day. These notes will be made available for the Counselling team who work on the MiniMentors’ website to see – on a special dashboard that only Counsellors can see. These notes will be shared with the Safeguarding Team if they need to take action to help you.
Notes about you are kept for six years and then they are deleted or shredded.
Who will you tell at my school?
The special team at Beatbullying will speak to the teacher running MiniMentors in your school or the teacher in charge of looking after the safety of children in school. They will only contact your school if they are very worried about your safety and the school can help you.
When are the police contacted?
The police may be one of the people we contact if something really, really serious has happened to you. We also work closely with part of the police called CEOP (the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre). We would contact this part of the police if we thought there was a very serious problem with a member’s safety online.
What happens if I need to speak to someone, and it is late?
There should be MiniMentors and MiniMentors’ counsellors on this site from 8am to 8pm. If you need to speak to someone and it is earlier or later than these times, there are other people you can talk to.
For your age group, the best place to contact is: ChildLine, 0800 1111. This is a free telephone helpline if you want to talk about any of your problems. Their website is childline.org.uk.
How else does this website keep me safe?
MiniMentors.org.uk uses some special computer software that looks at what people are typing in general chat, in private chats and in messages and blogs. It will block out any swearing, harmful conversations or anything that goes against the Site Rules. You may see the words *blocked* or *inappropriate* come up in a chat when this happens.
A member of MiniMentors staff will get an alert if the software spots that a harmful (upsetting) conversation is happening. A member of staff can then take action against whoever is upsetting someone and can block them from using this site. If you are in an upsetting conversation you should tell a moderator straight away by sending them a message.
MiniMentors staff will take action against anyone who upsets others on the site. We can block someone from using the site completely if we want to.