Category Archives: Training & online learning

Moderating a Facebook-based peer support group. Training for Hemihelp staff and volunteers

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I recently worked with Hemihelp (now part of Contact) to help them train volunteer moderators for their peer support group on Facebook.

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 strong community with a lot of peer support offered (there is little need for moderator input on this front). There is debate among members over the nature of the group and how it should be used.

I offered some advice around consultation with the community to help ensure the guidelines and moderation approach are based on the needs of the group. This can also be a really good way to introduce and embed changes.

Recruiting volunteers

Hemihelp planned to recruit volunteer moderators to help them manage the group moderation during office hours. I am usually a little wary about using volunteer moderators especially ones who are still active members of the group but this can depend very much on the community in question.

Initial response to the advert was quite low. This was perhaps understandable given the nature of the group (busy parents from all over the UK, many of whom couldn’t make it to London for training). I recommended that they emphasise the transferable skills volunteers might gain as well as the opportunity to help the community. This helped them recruit a few additional trainees but I think they would need to offer comprehensive online training to really increase their numbers.

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Community moderation training licensed to Cardiff Women’s Aid

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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 been happy to offer ad hoc suggestions and support around moderation and management as they develop their new online community SHOUT.

SHOUT is for survivors of violence against women in Cardiff and the surrounding areas. The name stands for Surviving through Hope, Openness, Understanding and Trust, with these values as their guiding principles.

I ran the initial training session for seven survivors and the community engagement project worker (who will be running the training in future).

After introductions we covered:

  • An exploration of the advantages and disadvantages of online support for both moderators and members.
  • An introduction to community moderation – thinking about what it is, what moderators do and how community members might be involved in moderation too.
  • Skills for moderation – emotional support and listening online.
  • Skills for moderation – using language effectively.
  • Skills for moderation – signposting and awareness of barriers to support.
  • Using personal experience effectively.
  • Community guidelines and managing posts and reports.
  • Looking after yourself while moderating.
  • Identifying bad practice.

Although we touched on safeguarding and confidentiality, this will be covered in more detail in a further training session run by CWA. In this session, they will also look at the technical side of the community (something that wasn’t finalised at this stage).

I also provided a practice activity that participants could do in their own time for some extra feedback.

It was a great day and the volunteers were all really enthusiastic and engaged. I’m really looking forward to hearing more about how it goes when CWA launch the community in a few weeks.

Clare created fantastic bespoke moderator training and helped us develop our brand-new survivors’ community. She went out of her way to ensure that the training met our needs exactly by engaging in various in-depth discussions and learning about our sector. But beyond that, she also helped us to build our vision for the community and the community guidelines; created an editable handbook for our future use and changing needs as the community grows; and offered ongoing support with tweaking the training as the forum develops.

The training itself was simple to understand but well-rounded and very comprehensive. Our moderators told us they thought the session was very positive, interesting, inclusive and approachable, and that the mix between group discussions and presentation was very helpful.

Clare was great to work with: patient, understanding and thorough. The training she developed and delivered was exactly what we needed. I couldn’t recommend her highly enough.

Venice Fielding – Community Engagement Project Worker – Women’s Aid Cardiff

 

 

 

Miscarriage Association learning resources ‘Highly Commended’ in EVCOM Awards

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Highly commended

I’m really pleased that the films I helped research and develop as part of the Miscarriage Association’s new learning resources for health professionals have just received a ‘Highly Commended’ in the Drama category of the EVCOM awards. These resources have been well received by health professionals too – they were given a 5* review in The Obstetrician and Gynaecologist in January.

I’ve written more about the work I did on the project here. The next step is to work with the Royal Colleges to accredit the resources. I’m currently researching the different options and approaches to accreditation at the different colleges.

5 star review for Miscarriage Association training materials in RCOG’s journal (TOG)

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Learning materials for health professionals

I was really chuffed to hear that the Miscarriage Association learning materials for health professionals were given a 5* review in the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists’ journal The Obstetrician & Gynaecologist (TOG). I did a lot of work on these resources and it’s brilliant to get such positive feedback. Can’t say it better than Kath Evans from NHS England who partially funded the resources…

 

Strong, powerful, upsetting, thought provoking and with important teaching points – developing Miscarriage Association learning resources for health professionals

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Sorry about the picture on the left....

Sorry about the picture…noone wants Trump on their blog…

Skimming through the British Medical Journal, I came across a blog called Breaking bad news in maternity care. It’s a lovely piece about the new learning resources I worked on with the Miscarriage Association.

I coordinated the development of these resources, working with the National Director of the Miscarriage Association, the Media Trust and lots of service users and health professionals. Mary Higgins describes them as strong, powerful, upsetting and thought provoking with important learning points. I’m pretty pleased with that.

The resources are online now although we’re not launching them officially until the new Miscarriage Association website is live. But it’s great to see that health professionals are finding them useful already.

There are six films  – one each for ambulance crews, A&E staff, GPs and booking in staff supporting women with pregnancy loss and two for anyone talking to women about management of miscarriage and what happens to the remains of their baby.  Each one is accompanied by a good practice guide.

Research

  • I created a short survey for women and their partners. It asked them the top three things they would like to tell the relevant health professional about their care – and had a free text box too. In the BMJ blog Mary Higgins writes ‘what I say will be remembered for the rest of their life’. And it’s true. Most women who responded remembered exactly what they were told – good or bad – even after 10 or 15 years. It’s so important to get it right.
  • I also surveyed health professionals to find out what they and their colleagues found hardest about these situations and where they would like more training.
  • I wrote a report on each of these six areas, identifying key learning points and pulling out quotes and experiences we should highlight.

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Community moderation training for OCDAction

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Last week I ran a session on community moderation for OCDAction.OCD action

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 effective as possible. They planned to use this session to help their first group of volunteers get started. Learning would also feed into new guidelines and support for future moderators.

Moderator skills

We started with an overview of the strengths and limitations of online support and the nature of community moderation. We spent the majority of the session identifying and exploring the main skills that moderators might need and practising applying them to example cases. We looked at:

  • emotional support and empathy
  • good comprehension and listening  through language
  • communicating effectively through the written word
  • resolving conflict
  • understanding and respecting boundaries
  • courage and assertiveness
  • a good knowledge of OCD and a genuine desire to help

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An introduction to community moderation

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Screenshot 2016-03-09 21.19.12

Every community I’ve worked on has been set up slightly differently

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 wanted to offer. The session was designed to give a basic overview of those important questions and decisions that anyone setting up an online peer support community should consider. We also explored the benefits and risks of some of the options available and started to think about the needs of specific communities.

“It was a very thorough, well-paced and thoughtfully structured workshop. A great introduction to the topic providing plenty of points to consider”                                               Zoe Ward, Senior Commuications Officer, NHS Leeds South and East CCG

I started the presentation by posing a list of key questions which we considered throughout the session. I thought I’d pose them here too.

What is the problem? Why? What is your experience?

These are questions you should be asking people from the very beginning. Without it you risk making expensive mistakes and creating products people don’t want or need. Talk to people. Test your assumptions. Don’t just ask what people want. Ask why they want it and then consider different options for solving that problem. Create something small and test it out. Keep on asking, reviewing and making changes – what people say and what they do in practice can be quite different.

co design

 

What is community moderation?

Next we went back to basics and defined our terms. Moderation, safeguarding, peer support, engagement – these can sometimes mean different things to different people. We can’t make useful decisions until we’re all talking about the same thing.

What kind of moderation do we want?

In defining community moderation we came up with a number of different types (including pre and post moderation) and a number of different roles that a moderator could have (including ‘policing’, providing support and facilitating peer support). We discussed what these might look like in practice.
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APP’s online peer support services: vital and life changing

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“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.”

APPLast Saturday I was invited back to run a third online peer support training session for Action on Postpartum Psychosis’ peer supporters.

Every year it is a moving and inspirational day (you can read about what we covered here). As I listened to the co-ordinators speak to new volunteers I was struck once again by just how important their peer support programme is.

In fact I think their services are a really good example of the life changing benefits that online peer support can provide. Peer support can be valuable for everyone but it is absolutely vital for APP.

Online peer support that connects those who’ve been there

Research by APP shows that women desperately want to meet other people who have been APP trainingthrough PP, to share symptoms and have time to talk. Partners said the same.

Everyone needs to share stories, to be accepted and understood – especially if you’re going through or recovering from severe mental illness. Unfortunately, because PP is relatively rare, friends and family don’t know what is is or what it feels like. There is unlikely to be someone living near you who has been there. Some people may be scared to speak about their experience for fear of stigma and misunderstanding. For most women the APP Peer Supporter training sessions are the first time they have been in the same room as someone who has also experienced PP.

APP’s forums provide that link. They connect people with hundreds of others who can support them. When someone signs up for APP’s one-to-one email support service they are actively matched with someone who has had a similar experience. The chances of finding that offline are very very small.
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How do you run a good training session in an online chat room? 17 tips and ideas.

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youthnet volunteer network

Last night I ran an online training session for YouthNet’s chat moderator volunteers (I’ve written a post about what is is like to moderate real time support chat for young people here). We all joined a chat room in YouthNet’s online volunteer community for an evening session.

The focus of this chat was talking therapies – learning more about them and sharing knowledge as well as discussing how they might come up in support chats and what we, as moderators, can do to make sure the young people who come to the session get the right information.

Good practice for running a training session in a chat room

Using a chat room for training sessions enables you to have more real time discussion. It Screenshot 2014-01-31 13.19.21brings everyone involved in a project or role together at the same time. It’s particularly useful if those being trained are spread out around the country. Some of the things I’ve learnt from running online training chats include: Continue reading →

Online peer support training with Action on Postpartum Psychosis

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Running a training day for volunteers working on a new online peer support service for APP

I was really pleased to be asked to help out with APP’s new online peer support programme.Action on Post Partum Psychosis logo

APP has been funded to provide peer support to women with postpartum psychosis and their partners. They have been running an online forum for over a year and are now looking to expand their offering to one to one email peer support. Women with lived experience of PP will be trained to offer email support to women who are in the early stages of recovery.

Benefits of online peer support

One of the real benefits of online peer support is the fact that people are able to find, connect and talk to people with experiences similar to theirs from all over the country, or indeed the world. It’s reassuring to find out you are not alone and helpful to hear how others coped in similar situations.

This is particularly relevant with postpartum psychosis. Many women may not know anyone else in their area that has experienced it. Often, even if there were someone, that person may not feel comfortable talking openly about it. This service will enable women to find support and reassurance from someone who knows what they are going through.

It also sounds as though many men whose partners get PP have no idea where to turn. They often try and support their partner in hospital alongside holding down their job and caring for other children. They often feel they need to be the ‘strong’ one – and disregard their own emotional needs. While the one to one support is not yet available to them; partners looking for support regularly use the forum.

Peer support in the training room

Like the Elefriends mental health community meet up, there was a lot of peer support in the training room. Unlike the Elefriends meet up, many of these women had never met someone who had experienced PP face to face before. This gave the whole day a really moving and inspirational feel. Continue reading →