Safeguarding policy

Everyone on Virtual Rail: members, and the volunteer staff who help them — Instructors (who mentor), Supervisors (who help on the network) and Administrators. It covers everywhere Virtual Rail is used: the website, the app (including the supervisor chat), the network itself, and the Virtual Rail Discord server, where mentoring takes place.

Members must be 16 or over. We ask for your date of birth when you register, so staff can see when a member is 16 or 17 and apply the extra protections below.

• The welfare of members comes first — before any session, booking or rating.
• Everyone is treated with respect, whatever their age, background or experience.
• Concerns are listened to, taken seriously, and passed to the right person quickly.
• Staff are told this policy, agree to follow it before taking a staff role, and are held to it.
• Anything suggesting a crime or a risk to someone's safety is referred to the police or the relevant authority — we do not investigate it ourselves.

Signaller mentoring is one-to-one, live, on the Virtual Rail Discord server. These rules apply to every session:

1. Our channels only. Sessions take place in the mentoring channels on the Virtual Rail Discord server — never in private calls or direct messages, and never on another platform.
2. Arranged openly. Sessions are booked through Virtual Rail, so a record exists of who, when and with whom. Any other member of staff may join a session at any time.
3. Voice and screen sharing only. A webcam is never needed. Nobody may ask a member to turn on a camera or send photos.
4. Screen sharing. Your instructor may ask you to share your screen so they can see your SimSig panel, and may share theirs with you. In Discord, share the application window (just SimSig) rather than your whole screen, and close or hide anything private first — messages, email, browser tabs and notifications. Only share in our mentoring channels. Instructors never ask to see anything other than the simulation, never take screenshots or recordings of a member's screen, and you can stop sharing at any time.
5. About signalling. Keep the conversation to the session. No personal or private questions, no flirting, no sexual or offensive language or content.
6. No personal contact details. Do not ask for or give phone numbers, home addresses, other social media or other accounts. Contact goes through Virtual Rail.
7. Never in person. Staff do not arrange to meet members offline, and do not offer gifts, money or favours.
8. Not recorded. Mentoring sessions are not recorded. The instructor writes a short report on what was covered.
9. Either side can stop. A member can end a session at any time, for any reason, without it counting against them. An instructor ends a session that becomes inappropriate and reports it.

• Sessions take place only in the open mentoring channels, and the instructor tells another member of staff beforehand that the session is happening.
• Staff never message a member under 18 privately — not in direct messages on Discord, and not anywhere else. Help goes through the supervisor chat in the app or our Discord channels, where other staff can see it.
• Staff never ask a member under 18 to keep anything secret, and never form a personal relationship with them.

• Instructors, Supervisors and Administrators must be 18 or over.
• Before taking a staff role they read this policy and agree to follow it, and the Code of Conduct's staff rules.
• Staff use only Virtual Rail's channels to help members (the supervisor chat, our Discord server, and email from contact@virtualrail.net), and keep what they learn about members confidential — except that safeguarding concerns are always passed to the safeguarding lead.
• A member of staff who breaks this policy is removed from their role while it is looked at, and may be banned. Anything that may be a crime is reported to the police.

Anyone can raise a concern — about another member, about a member of staff, or about something that happened on our Discord server:

• Email contact@virtualrail.net with the subject "Safeguarding" — what happened, when, and the people involved (VRN or Discord name if you know them).
• On the network, use Request supervisor in the app.
• On Discord, tell any Administrator or Supervisor, or use Discord's own reporting tools.

If a member tells you something worrying — staff especially: listen, stay calm, and take it seriously. Do not promise to keep it secret, do not question them in detail or investigate, and do not contact the person they are worried about. Write down what was said as soon as you can, in their words, and pass it to the safeguarding lead the same day.

What we do: the lead acknowledges a safeguarding concern within 24 hours, decides what action is needed, and refers it to the police or the relevant authority where there may be a crime or a risk to someone's safety. While a concern about someone is looked at, we may suspend their access.

• Emergency: 999. Non-emergency police: 101.
• CEOP (National Crime Agency) — to report online sexual abuse or grooming of a child: ceop.police.uk.
• Childline — for anyone under 19: 0800 1111, childline.org.uk.
• NSPCC helpline — for adults worried about a child: 0808 800 5000.
• Samaritans — any time, for anyone: 116 123.

We keep a record of each safeguarding concern — what was reported, by whom, and what we did — and of every mentoring session (when, who, and the instructor's report). Safeguarding records are seen only by the safeguarding lead and the Administrators who need them. How long they are kept is in our Privacy Notice.

We review this policy at least once a year, and whenever the way members talk to each other changes — for example new voice channels or new ways of mentoring.