Online involvement statement

We’re online Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm (excluding public holidays). We may monitor our social media accounts out of hours, particularly during major or critical incidents, but we do not guarantee coverage seven days a week, 24 hours a day.

Our main accounts are:

Other services and departments may manage their own accounts.

Feedback welcome

We encourage and welcome comments about your care, or the care someone you know has received at our Trust. We will endeavour to respond, help, or point you in the right direction if your comments or posts are:

  • respectful of others (including people who manage our accounts)
  • constructive and on topic

We also understand that frustrations do happen, so we’ll try to help if your post includes something we can actually help with.

Abuse is not welcome

However, we do not respond to comments that are:

  • abusive, malicious or harassing
  • contain threats of violence
  • includes hate speech
  • vexatious
  • unhelpful in nature
  • spurious
  • political
  • part of an ongoing or closed complaint, referral to the Health Ombudsman, or legal action
  • spammy
  • impersonating other organisations, official bodies, or other users

In these situations, we will:

  • report your comments to the relevant social media platform for violation of terms of services
  • hide or delete the comment where possible

False information and fake news

If your post involves our Trust, services, or people, and is demonstrably false, we may:

  • offer a correction and provide proof if necessary
  • ask you to edit or remove the post

Removing or hiding comments

Where a comment, reply, or post, falls into the above category of excluded topics, we will either hide or delete it where possible.

Blocking or banning people from pages, groups, and other online communities

Blocking or banning people from our organisation pages, groups, or accounts is used as a very last resort, and the decision is not taken lightly.

The decision to block or ban someone sits with the Communications team, who may seek opinions from the Patient relations team, the Legal team, or a relevant executive director.

However, our teammates (no matter their seniority or grade) do not have the same responsibility: their decision to block other users is entirely theirs to take.

Legal recourse

Where we believe your conduct is illegal we will if necessary:

  • report content to the police
  • seek legal advice