About Urge

Last Updated on Thursday, 01 September 2011 13:25

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About this site

General Information about Urge/Whakamanawa:

Urge/Whakamanawa is a youth health and information service designed to assist young people find useful information or resources to help them regarding a variety of youth related topics.
Urge/Whakamanawa has the primary goal of enhancing the health and well being of young New Zealanders, especially focusing on 13-25 year olds by:
• Helping young people help themselves and each other
• Having active participation of young people
• Incorporating the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi
• Helping to build communities both on line and off line
• Being safe, useful, credible and appealing to the target audience
Click here to find out more information about Youthline and our services.

User Contact

Urge/Whakamanawa operates on the premise of directing people who want help to the best people/organisations. Urge does not operate any kind of on-line counseling service, nor is direct contact encouraged with site users or those that may contact us through the site.

Users, however have the opportunity to email questions regarding general issues. The majority of these questions tend to be simple and easily answered by the Urge Administrator. However, where they are not, the questions are referred to the appropriate service for response.

In these cases the following protocol will apply: 

• All email queries are briefly acknowledged / responded to within 24 hours weekdays and 48 over weekends and will always include options for seeking further help and assistance.

• If queries cannot be responded to by the Urge Administrator then these will be forwarded to an appropriate service for a detailed answer. This will be in the form of copied version of the original question without any identifying details.

• Any questions posted to the site by an individual may be responded to publicly on the site were it is considered that a generic response on the site would be more useful both to them and the users. The sender will have an individualised email sent to them and a modified reply posted on the site. All replies are generic and all identifying details are removed.

• Urge does not encourage on-going communication, except when safety and common sense suggests this is the best approach to assisting them.
• It is acknowledge that some users of the site may be distressed or need urgent assistance and phone numbers and useful links shall be provided to assist people find help-services quickly.

• Where people are distressed, at high risk of harm or injury, or may require some form of specific assistance they shall be directed towards the Youthline Counselling Service. All enquiries shall be answered within 24 hours during weekdays and 48 hours over weekends.

• In exceptional circumstances or where someone is in immediate danger or serious harm to themselves or to others, Urge reserves the right to disclose to the appropriate service relevant information which may be held about them, without that persons consent in order to get them help.

• Should the security of the site be threatened (such as by hacking) we also reserve the right to take steps to ensure the safety of the site and pass on information to the relevant authorities.