SSSC 23 Things Digital – Thing 5: Social Media #1

Watched the video from the SSSC and explored the SSSC social media guidance for social service workers 12/4/21. I manage friend requests to my personal social media accounts by reminding people I still support of the boundaries explained to them on start of support and referring them to our organisational social media channels, which they almost certainly know about already anyway. I do this by my usual method of communication with that person, usually face to face, phone, txt or email. Our organisational social media channels are well monitored and managed, not by me, and private messages responded to by a different staff member, a managed arrangement supported people are almost certain to know already. When people I have previously supported send a friend request, and I do not have contact with the referred on to agency, I either send them a reminder of our policies and then block them or just don’t respond. This is in line with our organisational policies and procedures and in collaboration with line management. Our organisational policy on Social Media, which I have just reread today highlights the benefits and drawbacks of communication on social media, mainly facebook and twitter at moment, and advocates positive use to share information, inform and enhance the aims of our organisation but strongly emphasise all, any communication with people we support, or comments on our organisation or staff must be through organisational social media channels only and checked with management first. I am one of the administrators of our local facebook page and keep this separate from my personal facebook account and own business page. This worried me in the beginning but once familiar with facebook it is easy to see how to keep posting on one page completely separate from the other. I never mix personal or organisational and it’s a shame in a way not to be promoting mental health and some of the great work we do as an organisation but it would just get too complicated for my peace of mind so I just keep it clean and simple.