UPchieve is only qualified to provide academic support to students—we are not qualified to support a student in a crisis. In rare cases, a student may open up to you about a situation that you deem to be unsafe for the student or those around them. If this happens, you should take these steps:
Report the student to UPchieve. We want to be able to respond as quickly as possible when this happens. After reporting, you can continue the session with steps 2 - 5.
Validate their feelings.
You can say: “I hear you, it sounds like you’re going through a lot.”
Explain that you are not the right person in this situation.
You can say: “I'm not the right person to help you with what you need. I'm a tutor and UPchieve is only for academic support.”
Connect them to resources
You can say: “There are really supportive people that you can reach [choose a resource from below] and they’ll know how to help you because this is what they do.”
Resources to point them to:
Mental health crisis: www.crisistextline.org
Emotional support (not a crisis): https://need2text.com/
Child abuse: https://childhelphotline.org/
Homelessness: https://www.1800runaway.org/youth-teens/get-help
LGBTQ support: https://www.thetrevorproject.org/
Sexual assault: https://hotline.rainn.org/online
Unhealthy romantic relationship: https://www.loveisrespect.org/
After these steps, you can continue to be present and validate their experience or you can end the session.
You can say: “I’m glad you’re looking for help today and I hope the resources I shared were helpful! Please reach out to the resource I shared and I will be rooting for you.”