Co-producing social media in a learning disability service

Co-producing social media in a learning disability service

by | Jan 24, 2013 | NHS stuff | 3 comments

Recently I blogged about how we were collaborating with people with a learning disability to develop a social media presence. You can find the post here Our next step was for @digitalastair and me to spend a morning with a group of people with a learning disability, and workers, to have a shared think about how we might make this happen in practice. We found that whilst some participants had heard of Facebook, almost everyone was unfamiliar with other forms of social media, and only a few people had an active account. We had wondered whether the highly visual content of Pinterest might be appealing – and we weren’t wrong. It is no exaggeration to say that people loved it. We found out about everyone’s interests and then invariably we were able to track down a Pinterest site that matched. Everything from Freddie Star, through to Westlife, through to pubs in Leeds. The only thing which eluded us was Shakin’ Stevens – a gap in the world of Pinterest that has yet to be filled! This practical approach, directly connecting to people’s personal interests, was a great way to engage them in the possibilities of social media. The service already has a healthy eating group and participants immediately saw the advantages of keeping a photographic record of recipes as they are made and then sharing them with others through the site. People saw this as an opportunity to share their activities with friends and families. Workers saw it as a means of keeping colleagues, managers and commissioners in touch with their work. And as @Digitalastair pointed out: ‘On Facebook...
Forging a digital identity for learning disability campaigning

Forging a digital identity for learning disability campaigning

by | Dec 5, 2012 | activism, NHS stuff | 2 comments

How can healthcare workers and people with a learning disability best collaborate to co-produce an online presence, for the purpose of campaigning to reduce stigma and discrimination?  Well I’m not entirely sure. But we’re going to have a go at it. Our Get Me? campaign was developed when people with a learning disability joined forces with statutory and voluntary sector partners and in a shared mission to try and shift public attitudes. We had a simple idea – create a short film with people with a learning disability talking about stuff they like and enjoy – sport, food, socialising, reading the paper, listening to the radio and so on. Get Me?-  get a better understanding of learning disabilities is our message. We’ve created posters, postcards and a website which will include stories from people who participated in the film. But all this is a bit static. So we started thinking about how we might use social media to get conversations going about the campaign and expand our engagement. We recently had a great workshop with Abhay Adhikari, who is @gopaldass on Twitter, about digital identities onlin,e and we are using his formula to help us work through our ideas. We plan to create an online eco-system of people we can engage and influence who will be interested in our campaign sharing the messages more widely (for example campaigners, parents, family members, teachers etc.). Our digital solution is a Facebook fan page. Firstly, we want to go where most people are. Secondly, we want to be able to post lots of photos and pictures (for example, photographs of stuff which is good in...