We use social media as tools in our effort to communicate clearly, quickly and in an engaging manner to people who use our services and are interested in our work.
All our official channels display verified badges which confirm that they are recognised as authentic pages for our organisation and services. Social media pages that attempt to replicate our name, service, or branding should not be treated as trusted sources of information.
The following moderation guidelines relate to our social media channels. This includes Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, and YouTube.
These guidelines are in place to help create a safe place where you can engage with us, make comments, suggestions and ask questions.
Moderation guidelines
Keep our guidelines in mind when submitting comments and direct messages to our social media channels.
We moderate all messages and reserve the right to remove those which break our moderation guidelines. This is not about censoring your views. Moderation will not be used to suppress legitimate, reasoned discussion, criticism or complaints.
Inappropriate comments or content may include:
- Malicious or offensive messages that could constitute a personal attack on a person’s character, including other people using our social media channels, and our staff.
- Inciting hatred on the basis of race, religion, gender, nationality or sexuality or any other personal characteristic.
- Sharing personal details, such as private addresses, phone numbers, email addresses or other online contact details.
- High volumes of overly long messages which could constitute as spamming.
- Repetitive negative messages which aim to provoke a response or do not constructively add to the conversation.
- Comments that impersonate or falsely claim to represent a person or organisation.
- Swearing, hate-speech or obscenity.
- Comments which break the law – this includes libel, condoning illegal activity, and breaking copyright.
- Advertising commercial products and services – you can mention relevant products and services as long as they support your comment.
- Comments that name individual members of ICB staff
- Breach of any of the terms of any of the social media platforms themselves.
We reserve the right to remove comments, at our discretion, deemed inappropriate at any time. If we remove a comment for a reason listed above, we will try to reply to the commenter explaining our reason. We will invite them to make appropriate changes so that the comment can be reconsidered. Repeated breaking of these guidelines could result in the commenter being banned from viewing or commenting on our social media channels.
We will also remove, block, report or ban any user who:
- encourages others to post such messages,
- uses offensive images as their profile picture,
- has an offensive username.
Content
We use social media to publish a variety of content about Mid and South Essex Integrated Care System and Mid and South Essex Integrated Care Board and our services. This includes:
- guidance on how to access our services
- links to our news, blog posts, videos, guidance and other approved, publicly available NHS material
- topical questions related to our work intended to provoke discussion
- proactive social media campaigns (including paid advertising) targeted to different audiences within the health and social care sector, and the public
- links to relevant information produced and published elsewhere – this can include videos, blog posts, and retweets (RTs) from other X users
- interesting figures, facts, quotes from our staff, or observations related to our work
Retweets (RT) and shares
Content we retweet (RT) or share on social media does not imply endorsement. We may retweet news, links and personal observations we believe are relevant to the work we do.
Following
Our decision to follow particular accounts does not imply endorsement. We follow accounts on X we believe are relevant to our work. This could include following the X accounts of companies and other commercial enterprises, or their employees, who comment on NHS-related issues, or politicians from different political parties.
Availability
We are committed to updating and monitoring our social media accounts during regular office hours. These operating hours vary between our different services and accounts.
However, like many social media accounts, we may monitor and respond at other times of the day. We accept no responsibility for lack of service due to individual social media platform downtime.
Replies and direct messages
Our teams are available from 9.00am to 5:00pm (Monday to Friday, excluding Bank Holidays) and we aim to respond within 48 hours.
We read every comment, and will respond where possible, however due to the volume of traffic on our social media accounts, it is not always possible to respond to every comment.
Sometimes, we’ll need to find the right person to help and so may take a little longer in coming back to you. We encourage you to use other ways to contact us if your question or comment requires urgent attention.
We cannot answer individual medical enquiries on social media. If you have a medical question or concern, please contact your GP or NHS111.
Please remember, our social media teams who look after our social media channels are humans too, and we may sometimes make mistakes when posting, but we’ll update our posts as soon as we can.
Handling your queries
Providing information and evidence on social media
To resolve your query, we may request personal information or evidence to verify your identity and locate your record.
You need to be aware that any information or evidence you share with us by a direct message may be used by your social media provider in line with their privacy policy and terms and conditions.
Contacting us on behalf of someone else
In some instances, third parties such as family, friends, or organisations may want to contact us on behalf of someone who needs help with one of our services.
We need explicit consent from the individual before talking to a third party (including family members) about their record. You can provide consent by contacting us by phone or email.
Complaints, media requests, and freedom of information requests
We encourage you to follow traditional channels to make a media request, freedom of information (FOI) request, or complaint. See details of other ways to contact us.
Our staff and staff social media
Some of our staff post on social media under their own names or pseudonyms. Despite their professional affiliation with the ICS or ICB, their social media posts do not represent the official position of either organisation or our Board and should be considered the product of each individual as a private citizen.
Accessibility
We aim to make our social media as accessible as possible for our communities, and there are several ways we do this:
- Adding image descriptions to photos on social platforms
- Using CamelCase in hashtags to ensure that screen readers interpret hashtags correctly.
- Adding subtitles to videos
Privacy
We are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. We may use analytics or third parties to analyse our social media channels for trends, insights, and engagement.
What to do if you see something that doesn’t look right
If you spot any content or comments posted on our social media channels which you believe are not in accordance with these house rules, please report it to [email protected] and/or send a message through the relevant social media channel.
002 Social Media Policy