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…
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…
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…
Time to Talk for Time to Change Today is Time to Talk day. Once again the Time to Change campaign is encouraging people to take some time to break the silence that so often surrounds mental health problems and have a conversation with friends, family or colleagues. Or, in this case, the internet. #Take5toBlog So…
What does moderating real time support chat online for 10 – 25 young community members involve? Support chat Every other Sunday I moderate support chat on TheSite.org. TheSite runs a number of types of chat – I’ve also been an expert for their recent Mindfulness chat. I used to do moderation as part of my role…
I first came across the Elefriends community after attending their online peer support training. I was interested in online peer support for adults and wanted to find out more about the impact of providing community members with peer support training. How does this affect their experience? I wrote about this training here. Online community consultation…
The power of language Language is a powerful tool. I’ve written before about the value of metaphor in mental health support and how it can reframe and change perception as well as helping people understand subjective experience. Language is also a tricky thing – the way we frame things in words can influence how we…
Online peer support for mental health at Mind Yesterday I attended a session run by Mind on online peer support – helping users of the ‘Elephant (in the room)’ community on Facebook develop their skills in supporting each other. I was interested in attending as I had been chatting to Eve, one of the trainers…
The essential skills advisors and peer supporters need for giving advice, information or support online These are some of the basic skills that supporters and advisors find useful when working online. The support offered might be one to one (email style), peer or expert support, moderating forums or moderating real time chat. Depending on the…