Last week I completed the second of two online training sessions for Leukaemia Care‘s new volunteer moderators. Like many organisations, their support group offering on Facebook had traditionally sat with their social media team. As their support groups have grown, so has the need for independent moderation and overview (I’ve written more about this here)….
I’ve recently finished editing an audio conversation with two women who have experienced pregnancy after loss. We chatted over Zoom, sharing what we found hard, how we coped and what advice we would have for someone going through something similar. I’ve done a few of these conversations recently. It’s part of a suggestion I made…
Samaritans have been building a hub of online safety resources for everyone who might use the internet to seek support or talk about suicide, suicidal feelings and self-harm. The most recent addition is guidance for parents on talking to your child about self-harm and suicide content online. I wrote this for them earlier this year….
Supporting rail staff to manage remote contacts with vulnerable people Samaritans have just launched a guidance document I wrote for them earlier this year. The document is for people working on customer services or social media platforms at train operating companies across the UK. It provides support and guidance to help them support and signpost…
I recently worked with Hemihelp (now part of Contact) to help them with training for volunteer Facebook group moderators for their peer support group on the platform. The group was established in 2007 and became more active in 2011. It has over 5,000 members and over 11,000 interactions each month. It seems to be a…
I have recently licensed my community moderation training package to Cardiff Women’s Aid. As part of this three-year licence, they received an initial training session and feedback on participants practice activities, bespoke training resources and trainer’s notes, a train the trainer Skype session and a draft moderation handbook for their ongoing use. I have also…
Contact a Family got in touch late last year. They were looking for help setting up their new community, developing guidelines, establishing processes and training new moderators. Over the last few months I have been working closely with them and we’re almost ready for launch. Scoping I spent some time on scoping work –…
More and more charities are setting up online support communities – a space online for people who use their services to come together and share information, offer support and help each other to feel less alone. It’s almost expected now – if you don’t have a space like this, you may find people use your…
Last week I ran a session on community moderation for OCDAction. Unlike my session for Leeds Mind (which was for community managers and focused on developing a moderation strategy) this session was for moderators themselves. OCDAction have an established community but they want to expand their moderator team and make sure their current moderation practices are as…
This week I travelled up to Leeds to run a workshop I called ‘An introduction to moderating online communities’. It was attended by three groups associated with Leeds Mind. All of them were thinking about online peer support. Some had a platform built and in testing. Others were still figuring out what, if anything, they…
“I’ll always remember the first time I met a ‘PP lady’. It was a very special day.” “I had lots of friends who were mums but none of them understood what I was going through. I felt weird, lonely and isolated. When I found the forum I was like ‘Oh my god. People understand.” Last Saturday…
Consultancy for The Katie Piper Foundation In September I was contacted by Kerry from The Katy Piper Foundation. The Foundation supports people living with burns and scars. Kerry was looking for more information on managing online forums. She was particularly interested in moderation strategies and procedures for managing safeguarding and escalation. We had an initial chat on…
I’ve just finished 9 months working on the mental health peer support community Elefriends. The role was a maternity cover post and focused on community engagement as well as moderation training and support. So what did I get up to? Six co-design workshops with community members I organised and co-facilitated six co-design workshops with community…
“People said it was lucky really. I don’t know how to deal with that” This quote was one of many we gathered from young women we spoke to during the youth project consultation process I ran for the Miscarriage Association. It highlighted the need for additional support resources that reflected the experiences of younger people….