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Collective Advocacy Forum

This is an online forum where people affected by mental illness can share their views, stories and ideas on the services provided in Aberdeen. It gives you the opportunity to give your point of view to a supportive network of people without having to meet in a group. It is a way of keeping up to date with government and local consultations affecting mental health and having your say.

Using the Forum

You can join the forum here. This is a simple sign-up process and you will be automatically admitted to membership of the forum shortly afer you sign up.

Every on-line forum has ground rules and ours does too. Please read these ground rules carefully before joining or posting to the forum.

Rules of the Forum

• The forum is provided by Advocacy Service Aberdeen as a service to clients. It exists to enable people to share their ideas and experiences of collective advocacy.

• You are in control and can together decide to support each other to make your collective voices heard more effectively. Advocacy Service Aberdeen does not edit or approve messages sent to the forum so you remain solely responsible for the content of any messages that you post.

• We encourage you to ask and answer anything that crops up. Use the forum to communicate with other members, to develop shared ideas, and to build positive supportive relationships.

• When posting items to the forum, be polite at all times, and particularly if you happen to disagree with the person you are replying to. Disagreeing with a person does not give any of us a licence to be rude. Instead, express your own ideas positively. Use active listening to consider the ideas of others and always look for the positive intent in what they are saying.

• Humour is fine and makes communication more effective. Since the forum may be read by people from a variety of cultural and social backgrounds, jokes which are funny to some may be offensive to others. If you detect such a situation, you may wish to write to the person privately and explain the difficulty in a supportive and positive manner.

• No jokes about race, gender, disability, nationality, or religion are ever appropriate.

• You must not post any message or image that a reasonable person would find offensive. People come from many different backgrounds, cultures, and experience. Please respect individual differences. Subtle language differences do exist so think carefully before responding to others and ensure that what you say will be received as a helpful contribution.

• You may happen to strike up friendships with other regulars. There is nothing wrong with the occasional personal comment posted to the forum, but please avoid extended personal chit-chat and in-jokes.

• When replying to messages, you may wish to quote the relevant part of the message to remind others what you are replying to. Cut out anything that is not relevant to your reply. When cutting and snipping to make your reply clear, be sure the original posting intent remains intact.

• Never ever allow others to use your membership ID or password. Always log out from the forum when you have finished reading and sending messages so that others cannot use your ID.

• Messages exchanged on this forum appear in public and may be read by any user of the Internet. Discussion of the messages that appear here should be confined to this forum. It is never appropriate to quote or to paraphrase messages in other places unless with the express written consent of the person posting them.

• Members of the press and other media are reminded that this service is provided as a forum where people, some of whom who may be very vulnerable, can exchange ideas amongst themselves. This forum is not a source of material for publication and must not be used as such.

  The media rightly enjoy a privileged position in our society. Those privileges come with additional and special responsibilities.

  In the past irresponsible journalists have occasionally made inappropriate use of material appearing on open forums of trust which has led to the withdrawal of the forum to the detriment of its intended users and society at large. In the event that any abuse by press / media is brought to our attention Advocacy Service Aberdeen will hold the offending agency fully responsible for their actions.

What to do if you feel offended by a message

We feel confident that the majority of members will get on well with each other. However, there may be occasions when you feel unhappy about something that has been posted.

If you feel offended by something which has been posted please tell the originator privately, or take matters up with the moderators. Never ever add to a flame war on the forum.

Every message includes a button which you can click to report a post to the moderators. The moderators will aim to review all reports within 24 hours Monday to Friday. They may take a variety of actions which can include:

• editing or removing the offending message

• asking the sender of the message to make an apology

• placing the offender under close moderation which will prevent that person from posting to the forum until their messages have been individually approved by a moderator

• temporarily suspending the offender from the forum

• banning the offender from the forum

We hope you will find membership a positive and enjoyable experience that adds to your ability to give and receive support.