What is my emergency contact used for?

When you first sign up to Brain in Hand, we'll ask you to provide contact details for someone who we can get in touch with if there's an emergency.

This contact must know you personally and they must be over 18 years old.

We'll only contact this person if:

• you're in a real emergency
  If there's an emergency, we'll always dial 999 and also tell your emergency contact. If we're able to reach you, we'll let you know we've called them.

  
  

• you ask us to call them
  We'll call your emergency contact if you ask us to (or if you've already given us permission to call them).

It's important to have an emergency contact because if you're in a difficult situation we need a reliable way of getting help to you.

Do I need to have an emergency contact?

We strongly recommend that you do.

If you're over 18 you could choose to opt out when you sign up, but it's important to understand the risks of having no emergency contact available.

In many cases we'll never need to contact this person (and we hope we never have to) but if there was an emergency situation that made it impossible to contact you directly, then without an emergency contact, the Brain in Hand team would be unable to provide help.