Help Board Terms

These Help Board Terms add to our Terms of Use and Community Guidelines and apply whenever you post a request, make an offer, or arrange help with another member through the help board. If these terms and the Terms of Use conflict on a help-board question, these terms apply.

Life after treatment is full of practical hurdles. The help board connects members who need a hand with members who can offer one. Requests go into one of these categories:

• Rides: getting to an appointment, meeting or job.
• Work: job leads, résumé help, interview practice.
• Housing: sober living, rentals, next steps.
• Career paths: training, school, getting certified.
• Peer connection: someone to talk to who gets it.
• Sponsorship: finding or becoming a sponsor.
• Everyday life: childcare swaps, errands, paperwork.

Peer connection and sponsorship requests are about finding people who get it. A sponsor or peer on HEAL is a fellow member, not a counselor, and sponsorship is never paid.

Everything in the Community Guidelines applies. On the board in particular, don’t post or offer:

• anything for sale, rent or hire, or any paid service, including paid rides, paid sponsorship, coaching or “recovery consulting”;
• referrals, placements or beds at treatment centers, detoxes or sober-living homes. Recruiting for these, or offering incentives to go to them, is patient brokering and gets you removed;
• requests for money, loans, gift cards, crypto or fundraising;
• drugs, alcohol, prescription medication or anything illegal;
• dates, romantic or sexual arrangements;
• another person’s information, or a request on someone else’s behalf without their permission;
• misleading, fake or duplicate requests.

Some needs are too urgent or too dangerous for a public board of peers. If a request mentions self-harm or suicide, overdose, withdrawal or detox, medication, danger or abuse at home, or a legal emergency, it is not published. Instead:

• you’re shown the right crisis or professional resource straight away;
• the request is held and sent to a person on the HEAL team for priority review;
• the reviewer may publish it if it’s safe (for example, a request for a ride to a scheduled medical appointment), contact you with resources, or keep it off the board.

Why: a stranger offering a ride can’t help someone in an overdose, and advice about tapering a medication from someone who isn’t your prescriber can kill. Getting the right help quickly matters more than getting any help.

Our screen looks for words and phrases. It helps with routing but it is not a safety system, and it will miss things and catch things it shouldn’t. Please don’t rely on it. If you or someone else needs help now:

• Your first request is read by a person on our team before it goes up.
• Requests that touch a high-risk topic are always held for review, including when you edit a published request to add one.
• Later requests that don’t touch a high-risk topic are usually published straight away, and remain subject to reports and moderation.
• You can post up to five requests in 24 hours.

We may decline to publish, hide or remove a request or offer that breaks these terms or that we think creates a risk to someone, and we may take other steps under the Community Guidelines. We keep a history of status changes on each request for safety and moderation.

Coarse location only. You can add a general area, like a neighbourhood, town or “near downtown”, if it helps people know whether they can help. Never post a street address, workplace, the name of a treatment program you’re in, or anything that pinpoints where you live.

Contact after acceptance only. Your contact details are never shown on the board. When you post, you choose how people reach you:

• Through HEAL first (the default): nothing is shared until you accept an offer. Then you see whatever contact the helper chose to share.
• Share my email once I accept: after you accept an offer, that helper can see your account email.

Helpers likewise choose whether to share their email with an offer, and it is revealed only if the offer is accepted. Members who don’t make an offer, or whose offer isn’t accepted, never see your contact details. Share a phone number or address only when you’re ready, and only with the person helping you.

Help on HEAL is given freely, as one member to another. That keeps the board safe and keeps incentives clean. So:

• No charging for help, asking for tips, or advertising a service.
• No asking for money, loans or deposits, and never send money to someone you haven’t met. Requests for money up front are a common scam.
• If you and a helper both want to, the person being helped may offer to cover a real out-of-pocket cost, such as splitting fuel for a long drive or a bus fare. It must be voluntary, agreed before you set off, no more than the actual cost, and never a condition of help. A helper must not ask for it.
• HEAL doesn’t process payments between members and can’t help recover money that changes hands.

If you drive someone, be aware that taking money for rides may affect your car insurance. Check your own policy.

Most help on HEAL goes well. These habits keep it that way:

• Meet in public the first time, somewhere with other people around, during the day if you can.
• Tell someone you trust where you’re going, who you’re meeting (their HEAL name) and when you expect to be back.
• Rides: share the trip details with someone; check the car and driver match what you were told; sit where you’re comfortable; have your own way home. Drivers must hold a valid licence and insurance and follow the law.
• Home visits: avoid them until you know someone well. Don’t give your address up front. If someone is coming to help at your home, have another person there.
• Money and belongings: don’t lend money, hand over cards or passwords, or leave valuables with someone you’ve just met.
• Substances: don’t meet anywhere that would put your recovery at risk, and don’t carry or hand over anything for another person.
• Trust your instincts. You can cancel at any time, for any reason, and you don’t owe anyone an explanation.

If something goes wrong, call 911 if anyone is in danger, then report it to us.

HEAL is a community, not an agency. We do not run background checks, verify identities, check driving records, licences or insurance, or check qualifications of members who make or answer requests. Pseudonyms are allowed, so you may not know someone’s real name. Reviewing a request before it’s published is about keeping unsafe topics off the board; it is not a check on the person.

Any arrangement you make is between you and the other member. You decide whether to accept an offer, what to share, and whether to meet. By using the help board you accept that meeting or relying on someone you don’t know carries risks, including risks to your safety, property and recovery, and that you are responsible for your own decisions about those risks.

• Offering. Any member can offer help on a published request with a short note saying how they can help, and choose whether to share their email if accepted. You can’t offer on your own request. Offer only what you can actually do.
• Who sees offers. The request’s author sees every offer. Other members see only how many there are, and their own.
• Accepting. The request’s author chooses which offer to accept. Nobody is ever chosen for you. Accepting an offer marks the request as in progress and reveals contact details as described above.
• Declining. Declining sends the helper a kind update. You don’t have to give a reason.
• Withdrawing. Helpers can withdraw an offer at any time. Life happens; just let the other person know if you’d already arranged something.

When you’ve been helped, mark the request resolved. You can also close it at any time. When a request is resolved or closed, any offers still waiting are closed with a thank-you.

Requests come off the board automatically 30 days after they’re posted. If you still need help, post a new request. Closed, resolved and expired requests leave the board, and deleting your account removes your requests and offers as described in our deletion policy.

You can report any request or offer from the app. A person on the moderation team reviews every report, starting with ones about danger, privacy and unsafe advice. Moderators can hide content, warn, suspend or remove members.

You can block a member at any time. Blocking hides their requests from you and yours from them.

If something happened offline, such as a ride that felt unsafe, please report the member and tell us what happened at safety@teleheal.com. If a crime was committed, report it to the police; we cooperate with lawful requests as described in our law enforcement policy.

HEAL provides the board and keeps it moderated. We are not a party to any arrangement between members, don’t employ or act as agent for helpers or requesters, and don’t provide transport, employment, housing or any other service listed on the board.

Nothing here limits liability that the law doesn’t allow us to limit, including for our own gross negligence or willful misconduct.

Questions about the help board, or something you want us to know about a request or a member: safety@teleheal.com. That inbox isn’t monitored for emergencies; call 911 or call or text 988 if you need help now.