Terms and Conditions for Vancouver Island Crisis Society’s Crisis Line, Crisis Chat, and Crisis Text Services.

Vancouver Island Crisis Society’s Crisis Line, Crisis Chat, and Crisis Text (Individually and collectively, the “Service”) are bound by the following terms and conditions.

Please read the following statement before using this service. By using the Service, you agree to the terms and conditions described below. If you do not agree to the terms and conditions, you may not use the Service.

NATURE OF THE SERVICE

YOUR PARTICIPATION IN THE SERVICE DOES NOT CONSTITUTE MENTAL HEALTH CARE OR TREATMENT AND DOES NOT CONSTITUTE AN ATTORNEY-CLIENT RELATIONSHIP OR A THERAPIST-PATIENT RELATIONSHIP OR ANY OTHER SORT OF PROFESSIONAL OR THERAPEUTIC RELATIONSHIP. THE SERVICE IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR PROFESSIONAL HEALTH CARE. IF YOU BELIEVE YOU ARE EXPERIENCING A MEDICAL EMERGENCY, CALL YOUR DOCTOR OR 911 IMMEDIATELY.

Vancouver Island Crisis Society (“we”, “our”, or “us”) and its employees, board of directors, volunteers, crisis responders, service providers, agents, or any other entities with whom the Service has contracts, are not responsible for any decisions, or results of the decisions that you make while, as a result of, or after participating in the Service. This includes whether you choose to seek or not seek professional care, or to modify or terminate specific treatment that you are currently receiving based on the information provided by the Service. You are responsible for all decisions you may or may not make during and after using the Service and assume all risk related to those decisions.

PRIVACY AND SECURITY AND THE COLLECTION OF DATA

We are committed to providing you the best possible service at all times. Contacts made with the Vancouver Island Crisis Society’s Crisis Line, Crisis Chat, and Crisis Text may be monitored for training and quality assurance purposes.

We take your privacy and security very seriously. Security controls, including encryptions and authentication, are in place to ensure the protection of your information. We will not share or disclose your personally identifiable information; however, we do reserve the right to disclose any personal information to the authorities as required or permitted by law, as well as to authorize the engagement of law enforcement or medical services to initiate a safety check.

In addition, we collect and store information, including the possible content of conversations occurring on the Service, which we could use to create, or permit a third-party researcher subject to a strict confidentiality agreement to create, anonymized aggregate information, that does not identify individual users, for the purpose of quality assurance and suicide prevention research aimed at contributing to the advancement of crisis intervention services. Data from conversations collected, stored and used will follow the principle of minimal risk. Data will be collected, stored and used only for the purpose of facilitating better help to clients, ensuring quality assurance and for clearly defined research objectives that we determine could contribute to the development of better practices in suicide prevention using new technologies. An annual review of data being collected and retained will determine if the data collected will be deleted permanently or retained for a limited time for one or more of the purposes stated in this policy.