Why this statement exists
A platform that invites students to say how they are feeling will, sooner or later, be told something serious. What happens in the minutes and days after that is the whole measure of whether this project was worth building.
This statement sets out what we do, what we deliberately do not do, and where our responsibility ends and a school’s begins. It is written for counsellors, head teachers, officials and parents, and we would rather be held to it publicly than keep it in an internal folder.
The one thing to take from this page: the software does not make decisions about children. It shortens the distance between a student having a hard week and a trained adult in that building knowing about it. Every judgement after that point is made by a person, under their school’s policy and Guyana’s law.
Our principles
- A named adult, always. No student is enrolled unless there is an identified guidance counsellor or welfare officer responsible for them. A platform with no counsellor behind it is not a service, it is a liability.
- The child’s welfare comes before the system. Where following a process would delay help, the person helps first and records it afterwards.
- No secrets between an adult and a child. Nothing in this platform lets a member of staff communicate privately with a student outside the school’s own oversight, and nothing ever will.
- Confidentiality has limits, and we say so up front. Students are told, in words they can understand and before they answer anything, that if an adult believes they are in danger, that adult will act.
- Sooner beats cleverer. We would rather a counsellor sees a concern on the same day with imperfect information than receives a polished analysis next term.
- Screening indicates, it does not diagnose. A score is a reason for a conversation. It is never a label, never shown to the student, and never a substitute for a professional judgement.
Who is responsible for what
| Role | Responsibility |
|---|---|
| The school | Data controller and safeguarding authority. Owns the decision on every case, names a designated safeguarding lead, and holds its own child protection policy which takes precedence over anything here. |
| Guidance counsellor | Enrols students, records consent, assigns screening, reviews flags, opens and closes cases, and decides what happens next. |
| Schools Welfare Officer | Supports and supervises across schools, sees cases for the schools they cover, and escalates where a school cannot resolve something alone. |
| Vriesea LLC Registered in New York, USA. A Guyanese entity is being established. | Builds and runs the software. Does not assess risk, does not contact students, does not make safeguarding decisions, and does not stand between a counsellor and a child. |
We want to be blunt about the last row. We are a software supplier. If a school treats this platform as a substitute for a trained counsellor, the platform has failed, and we would rather not be deployed there.
What happens when a concern is raised
- A signal is generated. A screening response above a published threshold, a repeated request for support, an explicit indication of self-harm, or a Request to Talk.
- It is scored on the server. Not in the browser, so it cannot be altered or read by the student, and so the thresholds can be corrected centrally when the evidence changes.
- It appears in the counsellor’s queue, sorted by urgency, with the student’s recent history attached so the counsellor is not starting cold.
- The counsellor acts. In person. The platform’s job is finished at this point except to record what was done.
- Escalation, where needed, follows the school’s policy and the law — to the designated safeguarding lead, the head teacher, the Schools Welfare Unit, health services, or the police.
- The case stays open until a person closes it. Overdue follow-ups are shown as overdue. Nothing closes itself.
Where an indication of self-harm or suicide appears
This is treated as the highest priority and is never left in a queue to be noticed. The counsellor is alerted directly. If that alert cannot be delivered, the failure is recorded and retried rather than silently dropped — a notification system that fails quietly is worse than none, because it creates false confidence.
Crisis numbers are shown to the student at that moment, and on every page of the platform at all times.
What this platform is not
- It is not a crisis service. Nobody is watching a screen at three in the morning. We say this on the site, in the app, and here.
- It is not monitored around the clock. Counsellors see cases during school hours.
- It is not therapy or medical treatment, and it does not diagnose any condition.
- It does not detect risk on its own. It surfaces what a student chooses to tell it. A student who says nothing will not be flagged, and no software should claim otherwise.
- It does not replace a school’s child protection policy. Where the two differ, the school’s policy wins.
Consent and what students are told
Before an account exists, a parent or guardian gives consent and that is recorded against the student’s file with a date and scope. Consent can be withdrawn at any time, without a reason, and the account stops.
Separately, the student is told in plain language what the platform does, who can read what they write, and the one circumstance in which an adult will act whether or not they want that. We do not consider a signature from a parent to be sufficient on its own; a child who does not understand what they are agreeing to has not agreed.
Withdrawal of consent does not erase a safeguarding record the school is required to keep, and does not stop a school acting on a serious concern already raised. We would rather state that clearly than discover it in an argument.
Records, access and oversight
- Every time a record is opened, it is logged — who, what, when — to a table that cannot be edited or deleted, including by us.
- Counsellors see only students at their own school. Welfare officers see only their assigned schools.
- Ministry-level users see counts and trends, never individuals, and this is enforced on the server.
- Case notes can be corrected but not silently rewritten; the history is retained.
Conduct of people working on the platform
Our own staff do not have routine access to student records. Access for fault-fixing is granted case by case, logged, and reviewed. Anyone working with access to these systems is required to raise a safeguarding concern immediately to the relevant school rather than handling it themselves.
Where a member of our staff is going to be in a school in person, we expect the same vetting the school requires of any other adult in that building, and we will not object to it.
Raising a concern about us
If you believe this platform has put a child at risk, or that we have handled something badly, tell us at leveluplabs.gy@gmail.com with “Safeguarding” in the subject line. We will acknowledge within two working days and respond in writing.
You do not have to come to us first. Contact the school’s designated safeguarding lead, the Schools Welfare Unit, or the relevant authority directly. We will not treat that as going behind our back, and we would rather you did it than waited.
Review
This statement will be reviewed before the first school is enrolled, again after the first term of live use, and annually after that. It will also be reviewed after any incident, and what we changed will be recorded here.