Social Media

• Welcome you to our platforms to find out more about what we do
• Share stories about our incredible staff and the difference they make every day
• Read all mentions, @replies, posts and direct messages sent to us. However, we can't always reply to every individual message we receive. We will let you know if we pass on your messages to particular teams, such as our Patient Advice and Liaison Service.
• Might ask you to send a private message to us with your contact details, particularly when it's not appropriate for us to respond on social media. This means the right person can follow up with you about your personal question or concern.
• Want to know when something has not worked for people using services. Please share your experiences respectfully and without targeting individuals.  We won't remove a post simply because it's negative.  We will also always ask you to raise the issue through our formal complaints process.

• Tolerate racist, homophobic, hateful, sexist, discriminatory or marginalising content of any sort
• Tolerate online abuse or bullying of our staff (please report genuine complaints through our complaints process )
• Trolling
• We will never talk about an individual's care 
• Deal with complaints through social media. To make a complaint please contact Customer Services  
• Give clinical advice (although we’ll do our best to signpost to help where we can)
   

Sometimes someone’s post goes against our principles.

If that happens, we may hide or delete the comment, block the account that it's come from and/or report it to the social media platform and the police. In certain cases, the police may ask for copies of the posts. If posts are threatening, libellous or defamatory we always report these.

We will take action when a post contains, in any format including text, picture, video, audio or hyperlinks, any of the following:

• Hateful or discriminatory comments including references to race, sexual orientation, disability, abuse, mental or physical diagnosis, social and or financial status, ethnicity
• Profane, defamatory, offensive or violent language, incitement to cause violence
• Is abusive towards people who use services, members of staff or the public
• Links to material that would be upsetting to people who use services
• Discusses illegal activity
• Relates to confidential or personal information
• Irrelevant advertising
• Reference of pornography, weapons, terrorism, radicalisation
• Intention of personal financial gain
• Promotes any illegal activity

We'll always message users who we've taken any action against to explain our reasons.

If you have any questions, please get in touch by emailing nsft.communications@nsft.nhs.uk