Note that RUACH DOES NOT provide mental health, medical or other therapeutic care. RUACH works to connect those in need of emotional and spiritual support with volunteer-supporters. Services provided by RUACH are not a substitute for mental health care, therapy, or psychological or medical services.
These Terms and Conditions contain important information about our services and policies. By accepting these Terms and Conditions or by using RUACH services, you agree to all of these Terms and Conditions.
We offer emotional and spiritual support for persons over the age of 18. If you are looking for such support, RUACH will arrange short-term supportive conversations between you and a volunteer-supporter. RUACH has organized and maintains a network of volunteer-supporters in order to facilitate supportive conversations. RUACH also offers volunteer-supporters opportunities to consult with other volunteer-supporters on individual issues (in deidentified terms) and to obtain mentoring.
Our volunteer-supporters are unpaid and are not employees or agents of RUACH.
Volunteer-supporters come from various professional backgrounds, including mental health, social work, clergy, and chaplaincy, and will provide support in accordance with their respective individual training, skills and experiences and the professional standards and guidelines of their fields. RUACH cannot and does not control, supervise or review the services provided by volunteer-supporters, or seek to enforce any standards of care.
Supportive conversations will ordinarily be 30-60 minutes in duration, once per week, at a mutually agreed upon time for one to six (1-6) sessions. If you need to cancel or reschedule, please provide your volunteer-supporter with 24 hours’ notice. If possible, your volunteer-supporter can try to find another time to reschedule the appointment. In addition, you are responsible for attending your conversation on time; if you are late, your conversation will still need to end on time.
If appropriate or if you request, your volunteer-supporter will discuss with you other short-term services or potential long-term support options that RUACH does not provide.
If you have questions about a volunteer-supporter’s procedures, you should discuss them whenever they arise. If your doubts persist, we will be happy to help you set up a meeting with another volunteer-supporter.
Your volunteer-supporter may often not immediately be available by phone or email. At these times, you may leave a message on the volunteer-supporter’s voicemail. If you do not hear from your volunteer-supporter, and you feel you cannot wait for a return call or if you feel unable to keep yourself safe, contact one of the emergency numbers listed above or another emergency contact. Volunteer-supporters will make every attempt to inform you in advance of planned absences and provide you with the name and phone number of another volunteer-supporter so that you may receive support in their absence.
If your volunteer-supporter or RUACH is unable to reach you after two missed appointments or three phone call attempts, the support relationship will be deemed terminated.
Please ask us or your volunteer-supporter any questions you may have about any aspects of support and about your volunteer-supporter's training and experience.
RUACH will not discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, citizenship status, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion, ability, or national origin.
When you sign up for our services, you will provide us with the private information described in the sign-up form. This information may be accessed by RUACH administrators and volunteer-supporter team leaders, who will use it to match you with an individual volunteer-supporter. Your information will then be transferred to that individual volunteer-supporter.
We will retain your information for as long as you are receiving support and for one (1) year afterwards. During that time, we may ask you for feedback on your RUACH experience; any feedback you provide will be added to your data. Your data will also include our records of any other communications with you. This data helps us provide you with the requested support, respond appropriately if you ask for support through us again within one year, and evaluate our performance.
RUACH will not otherwise use or disclose identifiable information about you except as required by law or in the case of emergencies relating to the health or safety of any person.
After the “support plus one year” period, we will “deidentify” all your data. This means that we will delete all items that could be used to link the information you have provided to you, such as your name, contact information, etc. We will retain your deidentified data, which we will aggregate with deidentified data of others, for general research and for analysis and assessment of the support we provide. For these purposes we may share the deidentified and aggregated data with other non-profit agencies and with researchers outside of RUACH.
See our Privacy Policy for more information.
We have adopted appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect your data.
Volunteer-supporters may have confidentiality standards under the rules of their professional organizations, other professional or ethical rules, and applicable law. Volunteer-supporters may also keep their own records that contain your data. If you have questions about volunteer-supporter confidentiality or record-keeping, please raise them with your individual volunteer-supporter. RUACH does not control, and can take no responsibility for, volunteer-supporter confidentiality or records.
RUACH: Emotional and Spiritual Support (“RUACH”) is a volunteer, non-profit service. You hereby release and waive any and all claims of any nature that you may have at any time against RUACH, its founders, managers and administrators, officers, directors, employees, and agents, or against volunteer-supporters (collectively, the “Released Parties”), resulting from any acts or omissions of any Released Party related to or arising out of services provided as described in these Terms and Conditions, excluding claims resulting from the intentional misconduct or gross negligence of a Released Party.
Last updated June 10th, 2020