Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity’s Social Media Moderation Guidelines

Social media is a public space and we ask you to treat everyone with kindness, respect and dignity.

We actively moderate our social media channels from 9am-9pm Monday-Friday and 9am-5pm Saturday/Sunday (excluding bank holidays).

This covers comments on our social media posts, adverts and groups, including text, images, gifs and emojis as well as messages.

The views expressed by our social media community do not represent the views of Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity.

Protecting the children and families who feature on our channels is our priority. We may remove comments, limit interactions or take additional moderation action where necessary to protect those who have generously shared their stories with us.

We have a zero-tolerance policy for abusive, threatening, harassing or discriminatory language or personal attacks directed at children, their families, supporters and staff featuring:

• Age
• Being married or in a civil partnership
• Being pregnant or on maternity leave
• Disability
• Gender identity or gender reassignment
• Race including colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin
• Religion or belief
• Sex
• Sexual orientation

These comments will be deleted and the user banned from our platforms. We may report serious concerns to the platforms and/or authorities.

We will also remove:

• Anything that breaks the law
• Obscene language or imagery
• Disruptive, repetitive or spam comments
• Promotion of unrelated products, services or campaigns
• Content that shares another person’s personal data or confidential information without their permission in relation to:

1. Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity staff, supporters and fundraisers
2. Great Ormond Street Hospital staff, volunteers, patients and patient families
3. Members of the public

• False or misleading information in relation to:

1. Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity
2. Great Ormond Street Hospital
3. Health, medical care and treatments
4. Individuals, organisations or communities

• Promotion of political parties, candidates or unrelated political campaigns, or discussions that become predominantly political and distract from the purpose of our channels
• Content that does not comply with the social media platform’s terms of use or community guidelines.

Depending on the severity of the breach, we may remove content, block users and report accounts to the relevant social media platforms or authorities.

If you’re worried about a comment you’ve seen on our social media channels, please message us directly and a member of the Social Media team will get back to you during our moderation hours.

You can also email social.media@gosh.org - this inbox is monitored 9am-5pm Monday-Friday (excluding bank holidays).

Please also use report features provided by social media platforms.

We love to post your stories on our social media channels:

Patient families

• If you’re a patient family at Great Ormond Street Hospital and would like to share your story, please email families@gosh.org and our Family Stories team will be in touch
• If you tag us in a post or leave a comment, we may message you asking for permission to share your story. We would never share it without permission.

Fundraising

• If you’re fundraising for Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity and would like to share your story, please email social.media@gosh.org and our Social Media team will be in touch. Please note we can’t share individual fundraising pages or links.
• If you tag us in a post or story on Instagram we may add this to our Instagram stories. If your post or story features children, we will always ask for permission first.

We do not provide medical or clinical advice on our social media channels.

Please speak to your clinical team before acting on any advice shared in comments or messages by people in our social media community.

• If your child is a patient at Great Ormond Street Hospital and you have a query about their care, please contact your clinical team at Great Ormond Street Hospital
• Alternatively, please contact the hospital’s Patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALS) by email pals@gosh.nhs.uk or by telephone 0207 829 7862. PALS is open Monday to Friday 10am to 5pm
• Referrals to Great Ormond Street Hospital cannot be made through our social media channels. Please visit the hospital’s website for referral information: https://www.gosh.com.kw/online-referral
• We do not advertise participation in clinical trials or research studies