Terms of Use

Terms and Conditions for Use of CKSACC Online Chat Support

Our online chat is available on the second Tuesday of every month from 9 a.m.
until 12 p.m. and the last Wednesday of the month from 9 p.m. until midnight.
Through the online chat you can expect to connect with a CKSACC staff member
or volunteer who will support you if you or someone you care about has
experienced the impact of sexual assault, harassment or abuse.
Our online chat is available for folks who are 16 years of age or older. If you are
under 16, the Kids Help Phone is available at: https://kidshelpphone.ca/ and
1-800-668-6868.

What to expect on the chat service

Through this chat, you can expect to connect with a trained CKSACC staff member or volunteer who will offer support and answer questions about sexual and gendered violence, as well as related issues. If you have questions about an experience that you’re not sure about, you can talk to us. You don’t need to share any information with us that you don’t want to share. You can talk about something that happened a long time ago, or something recent. We will help you with a plan to get safe or stay safe. We will help with in-the-moment support and we can also help connect you to other organizations, let you know some options and figure out what to do. 

Using our chat service is not the same as accessing our regular Support & Advocacy service (where you build upon the last session each time, always with the same person) because each time you use the chat you may be connected to a different worker every time. If you want to get connected to ongoing Support & Advocacy, workers on the chat service can help set that up for you. And if you prefer not to access continuous services, that is quite alright. 

Privacy & Reporting

Records of this chat service will remain anonymous but may be retained by CKSACC and used for training purposes.

We take your privacy very seriously. You have the option to remain anonymous when using our service. 

When you message, you can give us your name or an alias. It’s up to you! Your message remains confidential and a CKSACC staff member or volunteer will respond. 

Anonymous means that you will not be required to provide any identifying information during a conversation. You may choose to give us your name or location because you want us to help you find services and you live outside of Chatham-Kent, but it is not mandatory to provide this information. If you request follow-up from CKSACC staff members or would like ongoing support, a form of contact will be needed but it will only be shared in the way you have requested.

If we have information that can identify you, in certain situations the CKSACC staff member or volunteer may be legally obligated to involve an external agency and/or emergency services. In this case, we will not be in a position to protect your anonymity. This is part of our “Duty to Report”. 

We have a duty to report in cases where:

• You are under the age of 16 (sixteen) and tell us that someone is hurting you, has hurt you, or is likely to hurt you, or, you have witnessed domestic violence.
• You have harmed or threaten to harm a child.
• You give us information about a child who has been/is being abused.

We will also attempt to involve an external agency/emergency service if:

• You are planning to hurt/kill yourself or someone else.
• You enter into a medical emergency during the chat.

It is important to note again that we do not gather information or have access to any information that you haven’t shared during your chat (this also means that we do not have access to information you may have shared in prior chats), and because of this, we are not able to send police or paramedics to you in an emergency unless you tell us where you are.  In case of emergency, we hope you will share information that may be helpful to you. 

Confidentiality

Our chat service is using technology built to be secure and is protective of the conversations held on it. It uses end-to-end encryption and the data is segregated from other users. Encryption is a way to ensure that if the data is being intercepted, it does not come up appearing the same way you see it, it comes up looking like code.

Despite these protections, using the Internet always involves some level of risk. We can’t guarantee protection from intruders or interceptors during your use of the chat service.

Respect

We take respect for one another on CKSACC Online Chat Support seriously, and work from a place of respect. This includes respect for you and for our workers who are facilitating this chat service. In prioritizing the safety of our workers: Misuse of this service will not be accepted.  We will not engage with prank callers.  Threatening / abusive or other harmful behaviour will not be allowed on CKSACC Online Chat Support.  In these situations we will end the call.

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