Confidentiality

Bristol Nightline offers an anonymous, confidential and non-judgemental listening service to students at the University of Bristol. Below is a run through of our confidentiality policy, and the complete confidentiality policy can be found here.

Documentation

• All communications are documented to ensure our service is operating to the highest standard.
• All documentation is anonymous and does not identify the user. This documentation can only be accessed by Nightline coordinators and the volunteer who took the call.
• We do not record or store phone numbers, IP Addresses, or email addresses, due to the anonymising software we use provided by the Nightline Association.
• We don’t share user information with third parties, to include the University of Bristol.

Disclosure of information

Bristol Nightline will only break confidentiality and disclose information to relevant third parties in the following circumstances:

1. If a caller is voicing thoughts of harming themselves and give us their location, the
   volunteer will call an ambulance. Bristol Nightline are unable to identify the location of a call unless this is revealed by the caller.
2. If a caller provides information regarding a current or potential serious threat
   towards others including a threat of terrorism, Bristol Nightline is required under
   the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001 to contact the police.
3. If a caller declares they are under the age of 18 and provide information of
   current abuse against either themselves or another minor, Bristol Nightline will
   pass this information on to the police.
4. If Bristol Nightline receives a court order.
5. Where a caller acts in an abusive or threatening manner towards our volunteers, we may disclose personal data of that caller to appropriate third parties. These parties include the police, other Nightlines, the Nightline Association and other authorities with responsibility for the welfare of our volunteers such as Bristol Student’s Union. This is done in order to serve our legitimate interest to protect our volunteers from harm and to keep the service available for genuine users.

In these circumstances the caller will be informed about the breach in confidentiality unless to do so may result in a further risk of harm to either the caller or other individuals. We may also keep personally identifiable information for a limited period of time to assist with this; the information will be deleted as soon as it is no longer required.
In all other circumstances Nightline will continue to offer an anonymous, confidential and non-judgemental listening service to its callers.

Queries

If you have any queries you can contact Bristol Nightline at:

Nightline.coordinator@gmail.com