In an attempt to drum up more support and awareness of mental health and learning disabilities, Hampshire Partnership NHS trust has joined social networking site, Facebook.
Being one of the first NHS Trusts in the country to use this modern method of communication, Hampshire Partnership Trust created the Facebook group with the idea to raise support for their application to become a Foundation Trust.
Terry Rydzynski, Web Development Manager for the Trust, said “The viral nature of Facebook means that it’s possible for the group to effectively promote itself. We set the group up as a way to recruit members to our Trust and hoped that people may help to spread the word through Facebook. We also use it as a tool now to allow staff to communicate among themselves and it allows us to follow these conversations so we can spot potential issues earlier.”
If the application to become a Foundation Trust is successful it would mean that local people can get involved, voice their opinions about the Trust and say what needs to be done to improve it.
The Facebook group also stands the purpose to raise awareness of mental health, learning disabilities and social care services, across Hampshire and reduce the stigma that is often associated with these subjects.
With a membership of 79 the group isn’t the most highly populated on the site as you would imagine but it is early days yet. Terry explained: “We are simply experimenting with Facebook at the moment and it’s too early to determine whether it’s been successful or not. We don’t even really have a set of success criteria by which we can measure and there are likely to be more benefits/disadvantages that we simply don’t know about yet.”