Terms of Use

The short version

• CrisisFlare is free, and it’s an information and referral service — we help you find support services and let them offer to help you.
• We are not an emergency service. In immediate danger, call 000.
• The services listed are independent organisations — we check their details carefully, but we don’t run them, and we can’t guarantee what they do.
• Be genuine, be safe: don’t raise false flares, and never use CrisisFlare to try to find or contact a particular person.
• Nothing in these terms takes away rights that Australian law gives you and doesn’t let us exclude.

1. Who we are

CrisisFlare (crisisflare.org) is a free, not-for-profit service that helps people in crisis find and connect with support services in Australia. It is currently operated by its founder, Graham Huf, while incorporation as a registered charity is completed [legal entity and ABN to be confirmed on incorporation].

Contact (including privacy matters): [email protected].

2. These terms, and who they cover

These terms cover everyone who uses CrisisFlare: people seeking help, support workers helping someone, people browsing, and representatives of service organisations using the partners portal (who also agree to the extra terms in section 10).

By using CrisisFlare you agree to these terms. We deliberately do not put an “I agree” gate in front of people seeking help — when someone is in crisis, a barrier is a risk — so for help seekers these terms apply by use, and we keep them short, visible, and in plain language instead.

If you use CrisisFlare on behalf of someone else (for example as a support worker), you confirm you’re doing so with their knowledge and agreement, and these terms apply to that use.

If you’re under 18, you can use CrisisFlare to find help — nothing in these terms stops that.

3. CrisisFlare is not an emergency or crisis service

If you or someone else is in immediate danger, call Triple Zero (000).

CrisisFlare is not staffed around the clock, is not a counselling or crisis line, and does not monitor flares in real time. A flare is a request that services may respond to — we cannot guarantee that any service will see or respond to your flare, or how quickly. Never wait on a flare in an emergency.

People who can help right now:

• Emergency (police, fire, ambulance): 000
• Lifeline (24/7 crisis support): 13 11 14
• 1800RESPECT (24/7 domestic, family and sexual violence support): 1800 737 732
• Kids Helpline (24/7, ages 5–25): 1800 55 1800

4. What CrisisFlare is

CrisisFlare does three things:

• A directory of support services (housing, food, family violence support, health, legal help and more), built from the public ACNC Charity Register and details published by the services themselves.
• Flares — you can raise a request for help that matching services can see and respond to.
• Messaging — once a service offers to help, you can message each other through CrisisFlare (your identity stays hidden until you choose to share it).

CrisisFlare is the connector, not the provider: we do not provide the support services ourselves, and we are not a party to anything you arrange with a service.

5. Information, not advice

Everything on CrisisFlare is general information to help you find support. It is not medical, mental-health, legal, financial, or counselling advice, and it isn’t tailored professional advice about your situation. Decisions about your health, safety, money, or legal position deserve advice from a qualified professional or the service you connect with.

6. The services listed here are independent

Every organisation in our directory, and every organisation that responds to a flare, is independent of CrisisFlare. We are not their agent, partner, or employer, and a listing is not an endorsement, recommendation, or guarantee of any organisation or of the quality, safety, availability, or suitability of what it provides.

What this means practically:

• Anything you arrange with a service — appointments, support, goods, advice — is between you and that service, on their terms.
• Services decide for themselves whether they can help; we can’t make a service respond, and we don’t control their waiting lists, eligibility rules, opening hours, or fees.
• To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for the acts, omissions, services, or advice of any listed or responding organisation (see section 14 — and note the rights that section preserves).

Our directory also links to organisations’ own websites. Those sites are theirs, not ours — their terms and privacy policies apply there.

7. We check details carefully — but always confirm

We work hard to keep directory details genuine and current: listings are built from the public ACNC Charity Register and each organisation’s own published information, recorded with their source, never invented, and re-checked on a regular cycle. Where we haven’t confirmed a detail, we say so — those listings are marked “call to confirm”, so please check with the service before relying on them.

Even so, services change phone numbers, hours, locations, and capacity without telling us. Please confirm critical details with the service before acting on them — especially before travelling. If something’s wrong, tell us at [email protected] and we’ll check and fix it promptly.

If you represent an organisation and want your listing corrected, updated, or removed, contact us — we honour correction and removal requests promptly (section 10).

8. Using CrisisFlare responsibly

CrisisFlare exists to get help to people in crisis. Almost everything we ask of you follows from that. You agree not to:

• Raise false flares or misrepresent a situation to obtain a response;
• Use CrisisFlare to locate, monitor, identify, or contact a particular person — including through flares, messages, or directory information. This protects people fleeing violence, and we treat it as the most serious possible misuse;
• Use messaging to abuse, harass, threaten, or exploit anyone, or send content that is unlawful or puts a person at risk;
• Impersonate a person or an organisation, or claim to represent an organisation without authority;
• Interfere with the service’s operation or security, or attempt to access data that isn’t yours (good-faith security research under our published security.txt disclosure policy is welcome);
• Scrape, bulk-harvest, or republish directory or flare data in ways that could endanger people or breach the licences in section 11; or
• Use CrisisFlare for anything unlawful.

This section is also our public content and misuse policy: you can block an abusive conversation instantly in-thread, and report it — or any unsafe listing or misuse — to [email protected] (we aim to acknowledge reports within 7 days, faster where safety is at risk). We act on reports — including removing content, unpublishing listings, restricting access, and suspending organisation accounts — with people’s safety as the first consideration, and we comply with lawful removal notices (for example from the eSafety Commissioner).

9. Flares and messaging

When you raise a flare:

• Matching services see a de-identified summary — the kind of help needed, your area, and your words. Your identity and contact details are revealed only after a service offers to help and you accept (see the Privacy Policy for exactly how this works, and for how long flares and messages are kept).
• Your summary is shared as you wrote it — best not to put your name, address, or anything identifying in it.
• A flare may receive no response — services respond only if they genuinely can help. If your situation is urgent, use the crisis lines in section 3.
• You can revoke consent, block a conversation, or delete all your data at any time (My flares → “Delete all my data”).

We may remove or restrict a flare or message where that’s needed for safety, for the service to operate lawfully, or under section 8 — erring on the side of protecting people.

10. Organisation accounts (partners portal)

If you create or use an organisation account on partners.crisisflare.org, you also agree that:

• Authority. You are authorised to act for the organisation you register, and your agreement to these terms binds that organisation.
• Accuracy. The details you provide (including your ABN, contact details, services, and capacity) are accurate, and you’ll keep them current. We verify organisations — including checking the ABN against the Australian Business Register — and we may decline, hold, or revoke verification.
• Your account. You’re responsible for it — keep credentials secure and maintain the multi-factor authentication the portal requires.
• Duty to the people you respond to. Offer to help only when your organisation genuinely can; treat everything a person shares through CrisisFlare as confidential and use it only to provide that help — never for marketing, fundraising, research, or any other purpose; contact people only through the channel they consented to; and never attempt to re-identify a person from de-identified information. A person can revoke consent at any time, and revocation must be respected immediately.
• Listings. We decide in good faith what appears in the public directory and how it’s presented (including safety measures such as withholding confidential locations). You can ask us to correct or remove your organisation’s listing at any time, and we’ll honour it promptly.
• Tell us if something goes wrong. If you suspect that information obtained through CrisisFlare has been lost, misused, or accessed without authority, tell us promptly at [email protected].
• Suspension. We may suspend or close organisation accounts that breach these terms or put people at risk — where safe and practical we’ll tell you why and hear you out.

11. Content, intellectual property, and attribution

• Our content (the CrisisFlare name, site text, design, and software) belongs to CrisisFlare. You may use the site for its intended purposes; please don’t copy or rebrand it as your own.
• Directory data includes material from the ACNC Charity Register, used and re-shared under CC BY 3.0 AU — attribution: Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission. Our own verified enrichments are part of the compiled directory; contact us about reuse.
• What organisations submit (listing details, descriptions): the organisation keeps ownership, and grants CrisisFlare a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, display, adapt formatting, and share it as part of operating the service.
• What help seekers write (flare summaries, messages) is handled under the Privacy Policy — it’s shared only as described there, and we claim no ownership of it.
• Feedback you give us about CrisisFlare, we may use freely to improve the service.

12. Privacy

How we collect, use, protect, and delete personal information is set out in our Privacy Policy and Collection Notice — they’re part of how CrisisFlare works and sit alongside these terms. The short version: anonymous by design, minimal collection, no advertising or tracking, no sale of personal information, and your identity is never revealed to a service without your consent.

13. Availability and changes to the service

CrisisFlare is a small, free service and we run it with care — but we can’t promise it will always be available, uninterrupted, or error-free, and we may add, change, or retire features (or, if we ever have to, wind down the service) at any time. If we ever wind down, we’ll do it responsibly: notice on the site, and personal data deleted per the Privacy Policy.

14. Disclaimers and liability

Your rights come first. Nothing in these terms excludes, restricts, or modifies any guarantee, right, or remedy you have under the Australian Consumer Law (Schedule 2 of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth)) or any other law that cannot lawfully be excluded, restricted, or modified.

Subject to that, and to the maximum extent the law permits:

• CrisisFlare is provided free of charge, as an information and referral service — we don’t warrant that the service, or the information in it, will be complete, accurate, current, uninterrupted, or fit for a particular purpose, beyond what the law requires of us.
• We are not liable for the acts, omissions, services, goods, or advice of any independent organisation listed in the directory or responding to a flare — including their quality, safety, availability, or outcomes (section 6).
• We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss arising from use of the service.
• Where legislation implies a guarantee or condition that can’t be excluded but can be limited, our liability is limited, at our option, to resupplying the relevant service or paying the cost of having it resupplied — that is, providing the service again, or paying for it to be provided again.

Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, including liability arising from our own fraud.

15. Ending or pausing use

You can stop using CrisisFlare at any time — and “Delete all my data” (My flares) removes your data immediately. We may restrict or suspend access, or suspend organisation accounts, where these terms are breached or people are put at risk (sections 8 and 10). Sections that by their nature continue — including the organisation duties in section 10, and sections 11, 14, 16 and 17 — survive.

16. Changes to these terms

When we change these terms, we update this page and the version line, and flag material changes on the site. For organisation accounts, material changes take effect 14 days after notice to your registered email, and continued use of the portal is acceptance [click-re-acceptance for material changes is being built — to be confirmed]. The current version always applies.

17. General

• If part of these terms turns out to be invalid, the rest still stands.
• If we don’t enforce a term on one occasion, we can still enforce it later.
• We may assign these terms to the incorporated CrisisFlare charity when incorporation completes — your rights won’t be reduced by that transfer.
• Where CrisisFlare is shown translated, the English version is the operative one.
• These terms are governed by the laws of New South Wales, Australia — and if something’s wrong, please email us first and let us fix it.

18. Contact

Questions, corrections, complaints, privacy matters, listing changes: [email protected]. Security reports: see security.txt.