Care Opinion has a moderation policy which governs how and what we will publish. This policy comprises our moderation principles and processes on:
- keeping everyone safe in the online domain
- issues of abuse and gross negligence
- safeguarding of vulnerable storytellers
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Why we have a moderation policy
We want this to be a place where you can read the experiences of other people using health and care services, and where the feedback offered by users can make a real difference to how services are run.
So we do not publish irrelevant or commercial postings (like advertising and spam). We also reject swearing, discrimination, or other offensive language.
The goal of the Care Opinion platform is to allow service users, carers, families, and advocates to share their experience and be heard, as well as allowing service providers the opportunity to hear and act on the feedback that comes from those experiences shared.
We want care providers to be able to hear the positive stories that are shared so that they can commend their staff for a job well done, as well as act on feedback with concerns so that they can improve, and drive change and staff learning throughout their organisation, ensuring a better care experience for all concerned.
Read more to learn more about the moderation process.
Why we contact service providers
Our platform is designed for stories to form part of a conversation with staff about care experiences. We contact service providers to let them know a story has been shared about their organisation and invite them to respond to it.
Ultimately, for Care Opinion to make a difference, it has to be trusted - by staff, as well as service users and carers.
When a story has been moderated, it is published straight away unless it is very serious. When stories are very serious, we contact the service provider to give them five to seven business days to formulate their response before we publish the story.
We do this so that staff have the opportunity to discuss your story, try to understand what may have contributed to it occurring, what steps can be taken to prevent it happening again and how write a genuine and considered response to your concerns.
Why some service providers do not respond to stories
When an organisation partners with Care Opinion, they let us know which staff need to be alerted to stories published about their organisation, and who is granted access to respond to these stories. These organisations have committed to responding to stories shared on the Care Opinion platform.
If an organisation has not partnered with Care Opinion, we do not have the contact details of any specific staff members to send the story to. Instead, we the service provider via the contact details listed on their website. These organisations may be willing to respond to your feedback but have not provided us with any commitment to do so and may prefer you to contact them directly rather than going through a third-party organisation like Care Opinion. For this reason, we cannot guarantee that you will receive a response to your story.
Please note that while we offer support and guidance to all service providers we invite to respond to stories, however, we are unable to control how, when or if they choose to respond to stories published on the site.