Frequently asked questions
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Detailed answers for people using support, families and concerned others, local services and professionals, and the commissioners responsible for planning and assurance.
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The answers describe the intended Support Never Stops model. Exact referral arrangements, privacy roles, service information and available features will be confirmed for each commissioned deployment.
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A clear boundary of responsibility
Support Never Stops is not a clinical system.
It provides information, learning, harm-reduction guidance, signposting, referral options and service intelligence. It does not assess, diagnose, prescribe, determine treatment or make decisions on behalf of a service or professional.
These clinical responsibilities are not included, managed, approved or influenced by Support Never Stops.
Support Never Stops is not an emergency service.
If somebody is unconscious, not breathing normally, having a seizure, experiencing severe symptoms or in immediate danger, call 999. The platform can provide urgent prompts, but it cannot dispatch help or monitor a person.
What is Support Never Stops, and who is it designed for?
Support Never Stops is an AI-assisted harm-reduction platform designed to provide clear, non-judgemental information at the point someone is ready to ask for help. It is intended for people who use drugs, people who are worried about their own use, families and concerned others, and professionals who need accessible harm-reduction information.
It is designed to complement local services rather than replace them. The platform can help someone understand risk, consider safer choices and identify an appropriate next step, including local support where this has been configured.
Do I need to be in treatment, registered with a service or ready to stop using drugs?
No. A person should not need to be registered with a service, have a diagnosis or be ready to stop using drugs before seeking information. Support Never Stops is based on harm-reduction principles, so it can support people with different goals, including reducing immediate risk, making one aspect of use safer, understanding a substance or preparing to speak with a service.
The conversation should meet the person where they are. It should not pressure them into treatment or assume abstinence is their chosen goal.
Can I use it because I am worried about somebody else?
Yes. Family members, partners, friends and other concerned people can use Support Never Stops to ask about warning signs, overdose response, naloxone, communication, boundaries and ways to encourage support without judgement.
The platform can also recognise that concerned others may need support for themselves. It cannot assess another person without speaking to them, and it should not encourage surveillance, confrontation or unsafe attempts to control someone else's behaviour.
Is Support Never Stops an emergency service?
No. Support Never Stops cannot dispatch an ambulance, monitor a person's condition or guarantee that somebody is safe. If a person is unconscious, not breathing normally, having a seizure, severely confused, experiencing chest pain, at immediate risk of harm or showing possible overdose signs, emergency services should be contacted immediately.
The platform is designed to interrupt the normal conversation and give clear urgent-action prompts where serious risk is identified. This may include calling 999, administering naloxone when available and appropriate, placing a person in the recovery position, or following emergency-service instructions.
Can it tell me the exact amount of a drug that is safe to take?
No. There is no universally safe dose for an unregulated drug, and risk can vary because of strength, contamination, tolerance, health conditions, route of use, medicines and other substances taken. Support Never Stops should not provide a dose that could be interpreted as a guarantee of safety.
It can explain factors that increase risk and offer practical harm-reduction information, such as avoiding using alone, starting with less, allowing time before taking more, carrying naloxone where relevant and using drug-checking services when available.
Can it advise me about mixing drugs, alcohol or prescribed medicines?
It can explain known or likely interaction risks and highlight combinations associated with overdose, sedation, serotonin toxicity, cardiovascular problems or other harms. It may ask follow-up questions about what has been taken, when, how much is known, current symptoms and relevant health conditions.
Because individual risk can be complex, the platform should encourage urgent medical advice when symptoms or high-risk combinations are present and may recommend speaking to a pharmacist, prescriber or specialist service. It does not provide individual clinical advice or replace advice from an appropriately qualified professional.
Can it identify a substance from its colour, packaging, street name or a photograph?
Not reliably. Appearance, logos, colour and street names cannot confirm what a substance contains or how strong it is. Different substances can look identical, and products sold under the same name can vary significantly.
Support Never Stops can discuss what a name may commonly refer to and the risks associated with that possibility, but it should clearly state the uncertainty. Where available, it can signpost to approved drug-checking or testing services rather than presenting a visual identification as fact.
Can Support Never Stops diagnose me, prescribe treatment or tell me to change medication?
No. It is not a doctor, pharmacist, prescriber or diagnostic service. It should not diagnose dependence, withdrawal, a mental-health condition or a physical illness, and it should not instruct someone to start, stop or alter prescribed medication.
It can explain when symptoms may need professional attention, help someone prepare questions for an appropriately qualified professional and describe the types of support that may be available. Any assessment, diagnosis, prescribing or treatment decision remains outside Support Never Stops.
Can I use it anonymously, and what information will I be asked for?
The platform is being designed around data minimisation. A general harm-reduction conversation should not require more personal information than is needed to provide relevant guidance. It may ask for broad details such as age range, general location, substance, route of use or immediate symptoms because these can materially change the advice.
Identifiable details may be needed if a person actively requests a referral or follow-up. The exact information collected, whether anonymous use is available and why each item is needed will be explained in the privacy notice for the relevant deployment.
Can it refer me to a local service, and do I have to accept?
Where approved local pathways have been configured, Support Never Stops can offer service information, contact options or a referral route. A referral should be a clear choice rather than an automatic consequence of asking a question.
The person should be told what information will be shared, with whom and for what purpose before they agree. They can normally decline and continue to receive information, although the platform may still strongly recommend urgent professional or emergency help where serious risk is present.
Will it contact the police, my family, social services or my employer?
Support Never Stops is not intended to routinely notify third parties simply because somebody discusses drug use. Routine commissioner reporting should be anonymised and aggregated.
There may be exceptional situations involving immediate danger, safeguarding duties or another lawful requirement. The platform cannot promise absolute confidentiality in every circumstance, and each deployment must clearly explain what action is technically possible, who is responsible for safeguarding decisions and the legal basis for any disclosure.
Am I speaking to a person or to artificial intelligence, and how can I trust the answer?
The conversation is AI-assisted, and this should be made clear to the user. The system is intended to work within reviewed harm-reduction content, defined safety rules, escalation logic and controlled local information rather than operating as an unrestricted chatbot.
Human governance remains responsible for approving content, reviewing incidents, monitoring performance and authorising changes. AI can still misunderstand a question or produce an incomplete answer, so the platform should explain uncertainty and encourage professional or emergency advice when appropriate.
What happens to my conversation and personal information?
Information should only be collected and retained for defined purposes such as providing the conversation, completing a requested referral, maintaining safety, improving the service or producing approved anonymised reporting. Access should be restricted, logged and governed.
Retention periods, controller and processor roles, suppliers, international transfers and individual rights must be stated in the deployment's privacy information. Routine dashboards should not display identifiable conversation content.
Can I use it at any time, on a phone, or if I have accessibility or language needs?
The aim is to provide digital access at any time, including outside normal service opening hours, although planned maintenance or technical outages may occasionally affect availability. The interface is intended to work on common phones, tablets and computers.
Accessibility, voice and language options may vary by commissioned deployment. These should be tested with users rather than assumed to work for everyone. A person who is unsure what to ask should be able to begin in their own words and be guided through simple, relevant questions.
How does Support Never Stops complement an existing drug and alcohol service?
Support Never Stops can provide an accessible first point of contact before somebody enters treatment, between appointments and outside normal opening hours. It can offer reviewed harm-reduction information, help a person clarify what they need and present locally approved options for support.
It is intended to extend reach and improve preparation for contact, not to create a parallel treatment service. Assessment, prescribing, care planning, safeguarding decisions and continuing therapeutic relationships remain with qualified teams.
Does it replace professional assessment, judgement or frontline staff?
No. Support Never Stops is not a clinical system and does not perform professional assessment or make care or treatment decisions. It can provide reviewed information, identify words or situations that require an urgent safety response, and present appropriate signposting or referral options.
All clinical policy, assessment, diagnosis, prescribing, treatment and professional decision-making remain entirely with the service and its qualified staff. These responsibilities are not included, managed or influenced by Support Never Stops.
Which services and professionals could use or connect with the platform?
Potential partners include specialist drug and alcohol services, needle and syringe programmes, naloxone providers, pharmacies, primary care, mental-health services, homelessness services, outreach teams, emergency departments, criminal-justice pathways and voluntary-sector organisations.
The exact role of each organisation should be agreed locally. Being listed as a resource is different from accepting referrals, receiving identifiable information or taking responsibility for an urgent pathway.
What local information can be configured?
A deployment can be configured with approved service descriptions, eligibility criteria, geographic coverage, opening arrangements, contact methods, accessibility information, referral choices and urgent or out-of-hours routes. It can also reflect agreed local terminology and population needs.
Configuration should not be a one-off exercise. Each item needs a named owner, approval status, review date and process for urgent amendment when a service changes.
How do referrals work?
Referral design can range from simple signposting to a structured referral that passes agreed information to a receiving service. The user should understand the difference, choose the option and know what will happen next.
The pathway should specify minimum required information, consent wording, delivery method, acknowledgement, expected response, failed-delivery handling and what the user should do if they do not hear back.
What information would accompany a referral?
Only information necessary for the agreed purpose should be transferred. This may include contact details, preferred contact method, broad reason for referral, relevant risk information and the user's stated preferences. Full conversation transcripts should not be shared by default.
The referral dataset, lawful basis, consent or other condition, retention period and receiving-service responsibilities must be documented before launch.
How will our service details be kept accurate?
The implementation should nominate local content owners and establish a governed update process. Services should be able to report changes to opening hours, eligibility, contact details and referral capacity, with higher-risk changes prioritised.
The platform should retain version history and approval records so it is clear what information was live at a particular time. Periodic confirmation should supplement, not replace, prompt updates when circumstances change.
How are urgent risk and safeguarding handled?
The platform should use defined safety rules to recognise information associated with overdose, severe medical symptoms, suicide or self-harm, violence, exploitation, abuse and risks involving children or vulnerable adults. Appropriate emergency or safeguarding prompts should take priority over routine content.
Local responsibilities must be explicit: who receives an alert, whether live monitoring exists, what information is available, operating hours, response expectations and what happens when no human response is available. A digital prompt must never imply that a team has been notified unless that notification has actually occurred.
What happens outside our normal opening hours?
Support Never Stops can continue to provide reviewed information and present approved out-of-hours options when a service is closed. It can explain when the service will reopen and what to do if the situation cannot wait.
It should not promise a callback or immediate response unless the receiving service has commissioned and resourced that function. Emergency pathways must remain separate from routine next-working-day referrals.
Can staff use it as a professional knowledge resource?
Yes. The professional route can provide concise harm-reduction information, learning resources, practical tools and links to approved guidance. It may support preparation for conversations and continuing professional development.
It is an information and learning resource, not a clinical decision-support system. It does not replace or influence a service's own policies, professional supervision, medicines information, toxicology advice, statutory procedures or individual professional judgement.
How is content approved and changed?
Support Never Stops governs its own harm-reduction information, learning content, safeguarding responses, AI behaviour and knowledge sources through named ownership, review, version control, testing and authorised release. Higher-risk topics receive proportionately stronger review and change controls.
This content-governance process does not create, approve, manage or influence a service's clinical policies, protocols or professional decisions. Those remain wholly within the service's own governance arrangements.
What implementation, training and integration work is required?
Implementation normally includes agreement of scope and boundaries, pathway and signposting mapping, content and service-directory configuration, privacy and safeguarding arrangements, referral testing, user acceptance testing, accessibility review, staff briefings and launch planning. The depth depends on the functions commissioned.
Any technical integration must have a clear purpose, suitable interface and agreed security and information-governance model. Integration does not make Support Never Stops part of the service's clinical system or transfer any clinical policy or decision-making responsibility to the platform.
What information can a service see, and can staff read individual conversations?
Service reporting should be role based and limited to what is necessary. A receiving service may see information deliberately submitted in a referral. Routine operational dashboards can show aggregate demand, themes, referral activity and pathway performance.
Staff should not receive unrestricted access to identifiable conversations simply because their organisation is connected to the platform. Any exceptional access for safety, quality or investigation needs a documented purpose, authorisation, audit trail and retention rule.
What responsibilities remain with the participating service?
The service remains responsible for the accuracy of its local service information, the capacity and operation of its referral routes, the response to information it receives, staff access, incident reporting and compliance with its own legal and professional duties.
Crucially, all clinical policy, assessment, diagnosis, prescribing, treatment, care decisions, professional judgement and local clinical governance remain the responsibility of the service. Support Never Stops does not include, manage, approve or influence those functions.
How will feedback, incidents, accessibility and unequal impact be managed?
Users and staff should have a clear route to report inaccurate advice, unsafe behaviour, inaccessible content, referral failure or other concerns. Incidents need triage, investigation, corrective action and communication proportionate to risk.
Monitoring should look beyond average performance. Services should review whether particular groups are less able to access, understand or benefit from the platform and use lived-experience feedback to improve language, pathways and design.
What commissioning problem is Support Never Stops intended to address?
Many people seek help outside service hours, remain unknown to formal provision, are not ready for treatment or need immediate harm-reduction information before they will engage. Families and non-specialist professionals can also struggle to find clear, locally relevant guidance.
Support Never Stops is intended to create an always-available front door that supports safer decisions, connects people with commissioned pathways and provides anonymised insight into demand that is otherwise difficult to see.
Which populations and strategic priorities could it support?
The platform can be configured for people who use drugs, people at risk of overdose, families and concerned others, young adults where appropriate governance is in place, people leaving custody or treatment, people experiencing homelessness, and professionals who need accessible harm-reduction information.
Potential strategic uses include overdose prevention, naloxone awareness, earlier engagement, reducing inequalities in access, strengthening family support and improving understanding of unmet need. Local priorities must determine the final scope.
What would a commissioned service include?
A proposal may include the public-facing conversational platform, separate user routes, locally configured content and pathways, referral functions, commissioner and operational dashboards, implementation support, governance documentation, testing, training, maintenance and ongoing review.
The precise package, service levels, integrations, support arrangements and commercial model should be set out in the contract. Public website material should not be treated as a substitute for a detailed specification.
How is the platform implemented locally?
Implementation should begin with discovery and pathway mapping, followed by agreement of scope, data roles, safety responsibilities, local content, referral routes and reporting requirements. Configuration and assurance are then tested with services and representative users before controlled launch.
Timescales depend on complexity, governance readiness, integrations and the number of participating organisations. A phased launch is often safer than activating every function at once.
How far can the platform be localised without fragmenting the product?
Local service information, referral routes, terminology, geography, campaign priorities and selected user journeys can be configured. Core platform safeguards, content-governance controls and approved harm-reduction principles remain centrally controlled to avoid inconsistent or unsafe variants.
Local clinical policies, protocols and decision-making are not part of Support Never Stops configuration. They remain under the participating service's own governance and are not controlled or influenced by the platform.
What information would be available in the commissioner dashboard?
Subject to the agreed data model, dashboards may show conversation volumes, time of access, broad demographics, geography at an appropriate level, substances and routes discussed, risk themes, support requested, signposting, referral offers, referral acceptance and selected outcomes returned by services.
Metrics require clear definitions and data-quality caveats. Counts should not be presented as prevalence estimates unless the methodology supports that interpretation.
Will commissioners be able to identify individual users or read conversations?
Routine commissioner reporting should be anonymised and aggregated. Small-number suppression, appropriate geographic granularity, access controls and disclosure-risk review may be needed, particularly for rare characteristics or rural areas.
Identifiable information should only be available where there is a separate, lawful and necessary operational purpose, not simply because an organisation funds the service. Commissioner access and service-provider access should be designed as distinct roles.
How should impact and value be evaluated?
Evaluation should start with an agreed theory of change and baseline. Measures could include reach outside normal hours, engagement from underserved groups, completed conversations, harm-reduction actions, naloxone interest, referral acceptance, successful service contact, user confidence, pathway timeliness and service feedback.
Quantitative measures should be combined with qualitative evidence and equity analysis. Attribution must be handled carefully because changes in overdose, treatment entry or system cost are influenced by many factors.
Will it reduce costs, overdoses or pressure on services?
The platform is designed to improve access, earlier support and pathway efficiency, but these outcomes cannot be guaranteed before evaluation. It may prevent some avoidable escalation, reduce repeated information-giving and improve targeting, while also revealing unmet demand that initially increases referrals.
Business cases should use transparent assumptions and test them against real deployment data rather than relying on unsupported savings claims.
Who is the data controller and who is the processor?
The answer may differ by function. A commissioner or provider may determine the purposes of local referrals and reporting, while Support Never Stops and its technology suppliers may process information under contract. Some decisions may involve separate or joint controllership.
Roles should be mapped in the DPIA, privacy notice, data-processing agreement and information-sharing arrangements. They should not be inferred solely from who pays for the service.
Where is data hosted, and how are suppliers and international transfers governed?
The final hosting region, subprocessors, support locations, encryption arrangements and any international-transfer safeguards should be documented in the technical and contractual assurance pack for the commissioned deployment.
Commissioners should receive a current supplier list and change-notification process. Public statements about residency should match the actual production architecture rather than the prototype or development environment.
How is the use of artificial intelligence governed?
The service should operate within an approved use case, defined safety boundaries, controlled prompts and knowledge sources, evaluation criteria, monitoring and human accountability. Model changes should be assessed before release, and known limitations should be communicated to users and participating organisations.
Procurement should consider transparency, bias, explainability, auditability, supplier dependency, model failure and the ability to suspend or roll back unsafe changes.
What safety, safeguarding and scope assurance should commissioners expect?
Commissioners should expect a clear statement of intended use and exclusions, documented platform safeguards, governed content and AI behaviour, safeguarding pathways, privacy and security controls, testing, change control, incident processes and transparent limitations.
The assurance model should also make the responsibility boundary explicit: Support Never Stops governs its own product and information environment. The participating service retains responsibility for all clinical policy, assessment, treatment and professional decision-making under its own governance arrangements.
What privacy, equality, security and resilience assurance should commissioners expect?
The assurance set should include a DPIA, lawful-basis and special-category analysis, privacy information, retention schedule, role-based access, audit logging, supplier due diligence, vulnerability management, incident response, business continuity and recovery arrangements. Accessibility and equality-impact work should be included from discovery through live monitoring.
Relevant certifications and independent testing can support assurance, but claims must reflect the entity and service actually in scope and remain current throughout the contract.
Who owns the data, content and intellectual property, and what happens at contract end?
Contracts should distinguish personal data, anonymised statistics, commissioner-supplied content, local service-directory information, platform intellectual property and improvements derived from operation. Commissioners should retain appropriate rights to their data and receive agreed extracts in usable formats.
Exit provisions should cover referral continuity, user communications, data return or deletion, retention required by law or safety, removal of local content, transition support and the treatment of aggregated learning. These issues are best agreed before implementation rather than at termination.
A living resource
Questions will evolve as the platform and local pathways develop.
Published answers should be reviewed alongside platform safety, safeguarding, privacy, service information and operational changes. Deployment-specific answers will take precedence where local arrangements differ.