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UnitingCare Children, Young People and Families User Policy Statement & Guidelines

Social Media offers the opportunity for us to communicate thoughts, feelings and ideas online and to create, share and consume content.  We believe that Social Media offers a range of important ways that we can engage with you, our stakeholder, to both deliver our key messages about the organisation and to hear back from you and continue to build the important relationship we have with you.

While we encourage your use of our Social Media websites to be as open and free from constraint as possible we have a duty of care to our service users, to you, and to the organisation to ensure that the conversations, comments and images in our website provide a positive and caring space for discussion.

This document, along with the Legal Policy Document, provides some guiding principles for you and clarifies any legal areas covering data protection, privacy and statutes that are relevant to our organisation’s activities and your use of our Social Media sites.  Please read through them so that we continue to build an active positive, trusting, respectful and caring online community.

Guidelines

Acceptable Contributions

As a ‘first guiding principle’, remember that everything you publish, including text, comments, photos, videos, audio and links is in the public sphere and you are responsible for it.

To ensure a positive environment for our social community to grow in we monitor and evaluate postings before publication and remove any that contain any of the following (see also the Legal Requirements for more detailed information about acceptable online behavior):

• links to or content containing libelous, defamatory or harassing content, even by way of example or illustration
• information that is confidential or proprietary to UnitingCare Children, Young People and Families, our affiliates, or our service users
• content that is violent, pornographic, racist or that uses inappropriate language
• content that contravenes privacy, copyright or trademark laws
• content or links that are primarily to endorse or market a service or product

If this or other inappropriate content is not picked up during our initial monitoring process we undertake to remove it as soon as it comes to our attention.

Transparency

All contributed content, comments and postings must also make it clear that the enclosed opinions are yours and you will be required to identify yourself before you can contribute to the sites.

Write as though everyone knows who you are. You cannot use anonymous or pseudonymous postings. Only named accounts can be used for contributions to our community.

If you are posting about an organisation that you work for, state that fact but do not, unless you are authorised to do so, speak on behalf of that organisation. Make it clear, where it is the case, that the included opinions are your own.

If you work for UnitingCare Children, Young People and Families you may note this but must also make clear that the opinions you are providing are your own and not the organisations unless you are authorised to speak on behalf of the organisation.

Consider carefully all your online postings.  A comment on a friend’s blog or wall is still a comment in a public space.  Be guided by the content of your comment, not the context.

Privacy

Protect your own and others privacy. Ensure that your Social Media sites (e.g. Facebook) privacy settings are adequate to your privacy needs.  Always be aware that your postings are in the public arena and that information you give about yourself or others may be easily harvested by third parties.

Reporting and Complaints

Our websites and Social Media sites have easy to find reporting links for any content that you wish to flag as inappropriate.  We undertake to review any reported posting rapidly and to remove them if required.

You can also lodge any complaints with the UnitingCare Children, Young People and Families Communication and Marketing Team.  Email contact:  digital@burnside.org.au

Finally!

While we feel it is important to provide guidelines for the use of our sites our primary objective is to foster conversation and communication.  We hope, by respecting the guidelines, that our community will give all of us a fantastic new way of working towards improving the lives of children, young people and families.