For carers

You look after someone. You cannot leave the house for long, you cannot plan an evening, and the adult conversation you get is with the pharmacist. Groups meet on Tuesdays at seven, which is exactly when you cannot.

Drop in for ten minutes, audio only, while you do other things. Nothing to schedule and nothing to explain.

Lumi has a Carers room for adults that never closes, and one-to-one audio chats that start in seconds. You do not have to say why you are there. You can leave mid-sentence when you are needed, and nobody minds.

How it works

1. Open the Carers room, or start an audio one-to-one. If you want a hard stop, choose a ten-minute chat; it ends gently on its own, with the option to wave at the end.
2. Pass the selfie age check, once. A moment at your camera, read by software on Lumi's own servers and checked by a person. The photo is deleted the moment a person has reviewed the check, and after 90 days at the latest whatever happens.
3. Talk while you do other things. Camera off, phone on the counter. Leave whenever you must.

The safety facts

• Every person you meet has passed the selfie age check. The Carers room is for adults (18 and over); adults are matched only with adults.
• The person you meet never sees your IP address: audio and video are relayed through Lumi's own servers.
• Lumi does not record your conversations. Automated screening on Lumi's own servers may sample camera frames and check text to catch abuse; what gets flagged is kept as evidence for 90 days and reviewed by a person, the rest is discarded.
• Skip or leave at any time. Report is one tap, and a person reads every report. Bans stick to the device and the connection, and a ban is never lifted for money.
• No account, no ads, no trackers, no data sale, and no third-party vendors. Nobody on Lumi will ever ask you for money.

What Lumi is not

Lumi is not a support service and cannot give care advice. It is people talking, which is sometimes the thing that is missing.

Why it matters

Carers UK's research has found that most unpaid carers feel lonely or socially isolated, 81 percent in one of its surveys, and that the reasons are practical: no time that is reliably free, and no way to leave. Short, unplanned conversations with people you do not know well raise a sense of belonging on the days they happen (Sandstrom and Dunn 2014).

Sources: Carers UK, State of Caring; Sandstrom and Dunn, 2014.

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