I am a parent/care-giver, can I talk to you about my children/loved-ones

It's great to hear that your child is looking into joining one of our programmes, or is already on a project with us. We encourage you to be involved with them as they prepare for projects and to encourage them to embark on adventures like this that will lead them to build maturity and gain new outlooks on the world.

We value the role that parents and other supporters can give to our participants as they prepare or make the most of opportunities.

We understand that your child may always be a child in your eyes, but we aim to treat them as young adults on a development programme and so generally we prefer to speak with them directly - unless there are extenuating circumstances, such as illness.

Our role is to foment 'development' of young adults and assist participants to gain life experience that will lead to growth maturity and broadening of outlooks, accordingly we believe that prospective/active participants should speak to us directly about their interests and needs on our programmes. Parents and other relatives are highly valued for their role as mentors, supporters, care-givers etc, but as the Gotoco project is all about your child/loved one gaining life experience and maturity, our policy is that we can only discuss them with you if the below conditions are met and there is a very good reason* why you need to speak to us (instead of them speaking to us):

Firstly, please note that in accordance with standard rules on data and confidentiality, we aren't able to involve 3rd parties (even parents) in discussions about individual applicants - unless consent has been given. 

Secondly, we encourage our applicants/participants to speak to us directly. So if they wish to invite a parent or other 3rd party to be involved in chatting to us, they need to contact us first and offer reasonable justification for why they would like to involve someone else in speaking to us.

Thirdly, out of respect to your loved one, we will always CC them on any correspondence that discusses them, unless there is reasonable justification to omit them.

So, If your loved one writes to us to consent to the first point, justify the second, and comment on the third; then we'd be happy and able to chat with you. We do encourage you do champion your loved one in gaining maturity, so if you'd like to be involved in communications with us, as the first step please try and guide your loved one in communicating effectively and independently.

*Exemption, if there is any cause to consider that there might be an urgent welfare issue that is so serious that we cannot follow the policy above, then we waive this policy and invite you to speak to us direct. Likewise, if you are getting in touch to send a birthday present, we'd also love to help!