Safety alerts

TutorCat checks everything your child sends, including messages, homework photos and wellbeing notes, for signs that they may be at risk. If a check finds a serious concern, two things happen:

1. Your child sees helplines straight away, with a kind message encouraging them to talk to a trusted adult. This always happens first.
2. You are alerted, by email and on your parent home.

Safety alerts and helplines are free on every plan. They are never behind a paywall.

#What triggers an alert

Only serious concerns in these areas reach you:

• your child may be having thoughts of hurting themselves
• your child may be in or near danger
• your child may have come across or been sent something sexual or inappropriate
• your child may be being bullied

Some things are deliberately not alerts:

• Smaller worries. Possible concerns are recorded, but they don't alert you.
• Ordinary homework that sounds alarming, like a history question about a war or "how did the character die" in English. The checks are built not to raise alerts for these.
• The tutor's own replies. These are checked too, and an unsafe reply is replaced, but that never alerts you about your child.
• A child telling us someone is hurting them. This stays private to keep them safe. See the section below.

You get at most one alert email per child, per kind of concern, in any 24 hours, so a hard evening doesn't flood your inbox.

#The alert email

The email's subject is Important: a safety message about [name] on TutorCat. It says what the concern seems to be, that it may be a false alarm, and what you can do. For your child's privacy, it never includes their messages.

#The Safety note on your home page

When you next open TutorCat, a Safety note sits at the top of your home page, above everything else.

It tells you:

• What happened, in a headline such as "Sam said something worrying", and when.
• What raised it: something your child wrote, a photo they shared, or a check-in note.
• What the concern seems to be, in the same words as the email.
• What we did: "We showed [name] some helplines and encouraged them to talk to a trusted adult."
• That it may be a false alarm, but is worth a gentle check-in.

Under If you want support too are helplines for your child's country. On a phone, choose Call to ring one straight away.

The note doesn't show your child's exact words. If the concern came from a conversation, you can choose Read the transcript. But the most helpful next step is usually a conversation, not the transcript.

When you've read it, choose Mark as seen. The note leaves your home page.

#What to do next

Otherwise:

1. Talk with your child. Find a calm moment. Listen more than you speak, and stay gentle. Thank them for being honest, even if the alert turns out to be a false alarm.
2. Remember the alert may be wrong. Automated checks sometimes misread a joke, a song lyric or a story they're writing.
3. Get support for yourself too. The helplines under If you want support too are there for you as well as your child.
4. Keep the door open. A child who feels safe telling you things is better protected than any tool can make them.

TutorCat is not an emergency service, and it doesn't watch your child in real time. Alerts arrive after your child has written something, and only while they're using TutorCat.

#When a child tells us someone is hurting them

There is one kind of message TutorCat never shares with parents: when a child tells us someone is hurting them, such as harm at home or abuse.

When that happens, TutorCat:

• shows your child helplines straight away and encourages them to talk to a trusted adult
• does not send any parent an email or a Safety note
• keeps that message out of everything parents can see: the transcript, session summaries, the weekly digest, wellbeing notes and the data export

Those messages are simply left out. Nothing marks where they were.

#Why we do this

We know this may be hard to read. Nearly every parent using TutorCat is doing exactly what you're doing: looking out for their child.

But when a child is being hurt, the person hurting them may live in the same home. TutorCat can't know who is involved. If we told the adults in the house, a child who reached out could be put in more danger, and might never ask for help again.

A child at risk at home must be able to ask for help safely. So we make the same promise to every child: if you tell us someone is hurting you, that stays private, to keep you safe. Keeping that promise for every child is what makes it safe for any child to speak up.

Your child is told about this in the app. You were told about it on the consent page, before you agreed.

#Everything else still reaches you

This exception is narrow. Every other serious concern, including thoughts of self-harm, being in danger, bullying, or something sexual or inappropriate, does alert you as described above, and those messages stay visible in the conversation.

#Safety replies in transcripts

When your child was shown a safety reply, you'll find it in the session's transcript, in full, exactly as your child saw it. See Sessions and transcripts.