14th October 2019

TAGS Facebook

• We have just launched an open Facebook group for parent carers. The purpose of the group is to allow parents of children and young people with additional needs in Sheffield to ask questions, share information and support each other. Professionals also welcome to join. We are running this group on a trial basis and will evaluate the impact on our capacity in November.

  How is the chat group different from our Facebook page?

  We will continue to use our Facebook page (www.facebook.com/sheffieldparentcarerforum) to publish information about news and events. Followers of our page can comment on our posts, but they cannot start conversations themselves. Members of the chat group, however, can start conversations by creating their own posts. In other words: the page is for publishing information, the group is a space where parents to talk to each other.

  Why have we chosen to make this an open group?

  Our chat group is an open group, which means that everyone can see it and everything that is posted in it. We did consider making the chat group a closed (private) group, but decided against it. This is because the purpose of the group is to share information as widely as possible. We want services to be able to engage directly with parents – but that only works if posts are public. For those who want more privacy, there are already lots of closed SEND Facebook groups available. We are unable to vet the people joining our group, so could not guarantee that posts would remain private.

  Join the conversation at www.facebook.com/groups/SPCFChat