Safeguarding & Child Protection Policy

Everyone should be safe in our community. Many of our members are young, so this policy explains how we protect them, what happens when someone may be at risk, and what we expect from every member of staff.

It applies across all of Synch: our Discord servers, the Synch Academy, our portals and our bots. It works alongside our Community Rules (especially rules 1, 3 and 5), our Confidential Information Policy, and Discord's own Community Guidelines.

If you or someone else is in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services now. Our staff are volunteers, and can't provide emergency help.

1. Age

• You must be at least 13 to use Discord and our services, or older if the law where you live requires it.
• If we believe someone is under the age required to use Discord, we report it to Discord Trust & Safety, and may ban them from our community servers. A ban for being underage can't be appealed until the person is old enough.
• Synch cannot verify anyone's age. We act on what someone tells us, or on reasonable signs.

2. Self-harm, suicide and harm to others

If someone says they may hurt themselves, or someone else, we follow the safety parts of our Community Rules (rule 3):

1. Doodle's care check. If a message in our servers shows someone may want to harm themselves, Doodle replies gently and encourages them to reach out, gives them helpline numbers and links, quietly alerts our moderators, and removes the message for their privacy. The team's records note who and where, never what was written. 2. Staff reach out with care, and point the person to local emergency services and to support services such as:

• Worldwide: findahelpline.com lists free, confidential helplines in most countries.
• Ireland and the UK: Samaritans, 116 123 (free, 24/7).
• UK, for under-19s: Childline, 0800 1111.
• United States: the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, call or text 988.

3. We report it to Discord Trust & Safety, who can involve the right authorities where needed.

We don't contact police or other authorities ourselves. We encourage the person, or those around them, to contact local emergency services, and we report to Discord Trust & Safety.

3. Grooming, exploitation and abuse

We have zero tolerance for grooming, sexual exploitation or any sexual content involving minors. Anyone who does this is banned permanently, the case is reported to Discord Trust & Safety, and the evidence is kept securely. This can't be appealed.

4. How staff must behave

Every member of staff, at every level, must:

1. Keep support in tickets, not in private DMs (rule 2.3 of our Community Rules). 2. Never have romantic or sexual contact with a member under 18, or say or share anything sexual with them. 3. Never ask a member for photos, their address, their school, or other personal details they don't need to give. 4. Treat what members tell them in confidence, sharing it only with the staff who need to know (see our Confidential Information Policy). 5. Report any concern straight away, as in section 5, even if they're not sure.

Staff who break these rules are removed from their roles, and serious cases are reported to Discord Trust & Safety.

5. Reporting a concern

Members: open a User Report ticket in our Discord server (discord.gg/NvbG77QZSP). You can also report directly to Discord through its Safety Center. If someone is in immediate danger, contact local emergency services first.

Staff report concerns according to how serious they are:

Anything involving a risk of harm, an underage user, or the exploitation of a minor is also reported to Discord Trust & Safety.

6. Keeping information safe

Safeguarding information is Restricted under our Confidential Information Policy: only the people handling the case see it, and it's never discussed in public channels.

7. Changes to this policy

We review this policy regularly, and update it when our processes change. Every version is kept in this page's history.