Connecting with the Community

I remember once there was a bit of conflict on the forums, and I was very grateful that the community manager checked in on me via email. I was appreciative of the personalised email showing support and care.

Check-in emails work for me.

I find the connection really good. I have made some ‘friends’ that I’m unable to do. We look out for each other and have got to know each other. Also the peer support team are great in responding. I was once on a forum group and responses were days later. This is more supportive and you are able to have conversations.

We are able to connect with whom we wish to and able to support anyone.

I'm not sure if this is what this thread is about, but I'd like to see more forum engagement from the side of SANE that does advocacy with the government and other big organizations.

Like, often with big inquiries, ect., you'll see that advocates from SANE are having a meeting with the government. In many cases the fact that such a meeting will inevitably take place is probably known weeks/months in advance (even if the date and time isn't settled until much later). So this would give SANE staff plenty of time to start a thread on the forum geared towards getting the community to plan out a significant portion of their agenda for that meeting.

I think these forums offer some really precious insight as to what's going on in the real world of suffering, mental illness & suicidalness, and it'd be great to see that insight filtering all the way upstream to the big decision makers. So often, the people in those meetings (if you can find recordings or transcripts) don't seem to be talking about the same world that the people in these forums are always talking about. I've always thought it would make such a differance if we could get some cabinet ministers, ect. to spend a little time browsing through this place to see how things really are. But if we can't bring the ministers to the forum, at least we can try bringing the forum to the ministers?

SANE Staff profiles

I’ve been waiting months to get to this stage and pose this question!

We have a mix of staff at SANE who engage with the forums. Some (peers and moderators) have the same anonymity as forum members for similar and important reasons.

I think (correct me if I’m wrong those who have been around longer) my creating a CEO profile might be new/the first time that’s happened.

Technically, I can’t put my picture on my profile because it would breach the guidelines; however I think there might be value in some key SANE staff having their profile on the forum, with an introduction etc.

Likely it’s senior staff and key roles that interact with the forums on design/delivery.

Would this be useful ? To know who from SANE’s management team is who? How would we manage expectations around timeliness of replies?

for example when I first set my profile up I had a couple of threads but then I couldn’t keep up with replies as fast as other moderators who are on shift are able to.

so I’m curious about what members feel would be a good role for members of SANE management, comms, tech team to play visibly in the forums? Are profiles helpful ?

Also curious to hear about governance- noting the deployment of the website reskin when we launched the brand was problematic for some parts of the forums, what involvement or awareness could members have in major changes at SANE?

We now have a Lived Experience advisory committee which is a subcommittee of our board and it has several forum members on it; but is a member nominated forum representative group a useful idea?

looking forward to your replies.

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@RachSANECEO wrote:
we've had two attempts at that this year with our bridging the gaps surveys - one in Jan and the other we released early October. What did you think of those?

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I thought they were pretty good, @RachSANECEO . Though my impression was that the most recent one was a work in progress, as it was rolled out. I remember on the announcement thread that some users were making comments (as requested by the management) about what was good and bad about the survey, with the implication that it was going to be changed on the fly in response to their comments. I'm not sure about the broader implications of that. I'd be worried that any sticklers for details might be inclined to call the validity of the whole survey into question, since it wasn't consistant throughout it's run. But maybe that's an overly OCD perspective.

And while surveys can be very useful in many ways, they also tend to be quite rigid.

I must confess that mental health surveys, overall (i.e. not just from SANE) seem to be getting increasingly more savvy; but historically the people who wrote these surveys didn't even know what the right questions were. We, the suffering people, had things we needed to say, but the structure of the surveys made it difficult-to-impossible to actually say them. But as I say, recent surveys seem to be growing more aware as to what our issues are. But I think there's still a bit of a need for more open-ended information gathering. Though I appreciate that these less structured approaches make life more difficult for the information collectors.

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@RachSANECEO wrote:

Would this be useful ? To know who from SANE’s management team is who? How would we manage expectations around timeliness of replies?

for example when I first set my profile up I had a couple of threads but then I couldn’t keep up with replies as fast as other moderators who are on shift are able to.

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Yes, I think this would be very handy. But I think it would pay to insure that the profiles are written in plain english, so that everybody clearly knows who does what. Upper-management types often seem to speak in a language all their own, particularly when it comes to describing their jobs.

Would it be handy to considder some sort of forum liason, to act as a bridge between the SANE management and the forum community?

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@RachSANECEO wrote:

Also curious to hear about governance- noting the deployment of the website reskin when we launched the brand was problematic for some parts of the forums, what involvement or awareness could members have in major changes at SANE?

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Well, to use reskinning as an example, you could maybe create a thread with sample screenshots of the possible new skins your considdering, and asking the community for their impressions as to which one they prefer? It'd probably be a good idea to include the currant skin as an option in such a process, too.

I love @chibam 's idea of engagement with forum members more when dealing with policies, other organisations, government, etc. We have a ready-made target audience right here of over 40,000 members - and a myriad of experiences, views, needs that are not always represented in the wider society - many reasons for this but one major one is the lack of consultation with actual consumers. For SANE to lead the way (and align with it's goals), we, as consumers in the system need to be widely consulted. This does mean that ALL experiences need to be considered and maybe that also means that part of our Community Guidelines need to be addressed - for example: Safety - talks about

• avoid posting ongoing / repetitive criticism of a service offering

Whilst this should remain as such, there also needs to be scope to constructively criticise services as we have many, many members who have not had good experiences with some services ...to the point that it has adversely affected their lives.

Pop-up polls are a good idea but would need to be non-intrusive ie. not popping up every time one logs on. A dedicated thread for all such polls, consultations, etc. would be ideal so members could subscribe if interested and visit as they like.

I do like the idea of a forums consultation group. This used to be something that was done with Community Guides and they could bring to the forums. As that program (and consultations) have significantly wained over the last couple of years - would a wider forums group dedicated to bringing issues to the wider forum be more applicable now? or do we need to open up the Community Guide program to a wider myriad of voices?

Profiles of SANE staff would be helpful. They do not have to use their real names - forum usernames is enough. It would be good to have an idea of what everyone does behind the scenes to keep SANE rolling. An overview is enough - it does not have to be an extensive list ie. I am @RachSANECEO My role at SANE is ...... I am passionate about a peer lead space where we can advocate on behalf of our members for sustantial recognition and reform.

Having the structure and roles of the different sections of SANE, with a short descriptor, would also be a good idea ie. the Lived Experience Advisory Committee is an advisory committe that reports directly to the SANE Board and includes both members and non-members from a wide range of lived experience as either a consumer or carer.....

I think, for some, having a very clear idea of WHAT SANE does, how it is structured and what goes into the massive amount of advocacy work it does do, would be very transparent and equally eye opening for some. Having clear pathways for such advocacy from the grassroots would be most beneficial.

@chibam In response to your survey questions, the one SANE has just run is much more open-ended, with areas for further comment on all sections. This is something that was much needed, as you said - a lot of surveys are often pretty rigid and tend to sway results towards a preconceived outcome or response. From what I can gather, this one was done in consultation with forum members ie. a small group consulted over several means (focus groups, thread on the forum, highlighted needs from members over time) so the intial set up of topics came from the forums and was devised around what forum members saw as most important. Of course, any survey will never capture ALL needs/topics/views but I think this one was much more comprehensive (and open) than so many we have had in the past.

Whatever comes from the current survey, focus groups and further reskinning @chibam ABSOLUTELY needs to include member voices ongoing. There is no point doing all this preliminary work without continuing to include an organisation's members ongoing. This could be a small working group of forum members but also needs to be placed on the forums for continued consultation also.

One of the big 'issues' I have personally with connecting with the community is that it is done 'ad hoc' by some moderators, PSWs, etc. There are some threads that have extensive interaction and some that have none at all. This is more of a wider issue in how members are supported and the processes that are in place to make sure (or not) that ALL members are given support. The current processes are definitely not working - we so often see members having no response to posts when others are having continued (and long-lasting) conversations. Connecting to the Community - at the grassroots ie. on the forums - should be a priority above any outside communication. ....and to make sure this is equitable needs a rethink of the way this is done.