Safety and governance
From our adherence to strict safeguarding frameworks and comprehensive training programmes, to our policy of pre-moderating all content on our platforms, safety is front and centre of everything we do.
Go somewhere good
The sense of safety people feel when accessing Kooth and the trust that this generates means that many people feel able to speak out - sometimes for the first time.
Tom Strannix, Kooth's head of safeguarding, explains the importance of Kooth or Qwell as a 'digital front door' through which many people find help and sanctuary.
Ensuring safe content
We pre-moderate every single word on Kooth.
This means that no user generated content - such as a poem, a story or a forum comment is published to our site until it has been moderated by one of our moderating team.
All our content is age-gated to ensure service users only see what is appropriate and relevant for their age. Based on an evidence based framework, our age ratings are 10-11, 12-13, 14-17 and 18+.
In addition there is certain content we would never publish, such as details or methods of self harm or suicide.
How Kooth helped Jessica
Jessica created this video to convey the depth of support around loneliness, depression and anxiety she received from Kooth, as an undiagnosed autistic girl. Jessica describes her experience with Kooth as having "found community".
Compliance frameworks
Kooth has earned accreditations from a range of clinical and safety bodies
Moderated by real people
Our moderators are a team of passionate, dedicated professionals. All moderators have a degree in a relevant subject, such as psychology or social work.
The team also benefits from extensive training in relation to safeguarding, fully aligned with NHS guidelines
As our service grows, we are trialling the use of ethical AI to support moderation in identifying safeguarding issues in service users' online journals.
All professional support is delivered by trained mental health practitioners; Kooth does not use AI within counselling or elsewhere on the platform.