Community Guidelines

House rules

We expect everyone who visits or engages with our social media channels to do so in a respectful way.
We have some simple rules in place to keep our social media a safe, open and helpful space for everyone. These rules apply to all content you post, including comments, profile photographs, user names and more. We have designed these rules so we can engage with each other in a considerate and appropriate way. We ask that you follow these rules at all times; if you do not accept them, please do not use our social media channels.

Rules

We ask that you be respectful and treat others as you would like to be treated when you are using our social media channels.

Please be mindful that each social media user is responsible for the content they post to our channels; we do not necessarily endorse the views expressed in or accuracy of content shared by our social media users. You may see content on our social media channels that you do not like or agree with, but that does not necessarily go against our house rules.

To keep our social media space a welcoming, informative and enjoyable space, please:

• Be polite and tolerant | Everyone has a right to dignity and equality. Don’t share content that is offensive, harassing or prejudiced towards others on grounds of gender, race, mental health or disability, ethnicity, sexual orientation or others.
• Be sensitive | Please remember that all social media users may be going through different things in their lives. If you are sharing emotionally powerful content, please consider making others aware of this at the beginning of your post. Do not post content that is overly graphic, needlessly violent, sexually explicit, or encouraging of harm.
• Be open and transparent | Listen to other’s opinions, even if you don’t agree with them; take part in discussions in a constructive way; and do not pretend to be another person or organisation.
• Respect people’s privacy | Privacy is important for everyone; please do not share people’s contact details or personal information. You can see our organisational Privacy Notice here; please be aware that each social media platform has its own privacy policies which will apply in your use of social media.

Responses

We have a zero tolerance approach to content which we feel does not follow the house rules above.

Examples include content which we feel is:

• offensive, abusive or threatening
• vulgar or obscene
• discriminatory or unlawful
• misleading or falsely impersonating others
• defamatory
• spam, or repeated posts of the same and/or off-topic message(s)
• trolling in nature, or aiming to deliberately provoke or upset others.

This zero tolerance approach applies to social media posts, digital adverts, YouTube comments and all digital communications.

If we feel your content falls under the examples above, in most cases, we will respond and request that you remove the relevant content yourself, providing details of our feedback pathways for an offline conversation if appropriate. We reserve the right to hide or remove any content that we feel goes against our house rules and to block users who do not wish to respect them. We also reserve the right to hide any comments on our digital adverts or boosted posts that are in violation of our house rules, and to screenshot and save any posts, comments or messages required for security, administrative and legal purposes. If we do so, we may respond to you on the relevant social media platform to let you know that this is happening, unless your content has gone against our house rules on repeated occasions and we have explained this to you in the past.

Monitoring and crisis support

Our social media channels are monitored from 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday (excluding bank holidays). Our digital communications team strives to engage with content in a timely way, and always aims to respond to your questions or support queries.

When helping you with your queries or responding to comments, our team may ask you to send us a private message by email or through a social media platform. This is to protect privacy and ensure we can identify how we can best help you.

We do not provide crisis support across our social media channels. However, we may use our social media channels to share information about support services, including crisis support. If you are in need
of information about mental health services, you can find out more about our Support and Information Line here or call its team on +353 1 249 3333. If you need immediate help for your mental health, you can find contact details for crisis supports and services here.

Complaints

If you would like to alert us to any inappropriate use of our social media channels, please email communications@stpatricks.ie.

If you would like to make a formal complaint about our work or services, please get in touch with our Clinical Governance Committee (CGC). There are a number of ways you can get in touch with CGC, including through an online form; by email to clinicalgovernance@stpatricks.ie; by phone; or in writing by post. You can see more on our complaints and feedback pathways here. 

These guidelines were last updated in October 2021. Please note we reserve the right to amend, correct or add to these Community Guidelines at any time, with or without prior notice.