The Wallich Community Guidelines

How The Wallich uses social media

The Wallich uses a variety of social media channels to provide information about homelessness and homelessness-related issues including mental health, housing, employment, criminal justice etc.

In addition, we keep our supporters up-to-date with our work, including innovative services, policy and campaigns, latest news and opportunities to get involved in.

Our social media channels can also be used for people to share their experience of our services, when consented to.

At The Wallich, we use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. These channels allow us to reach a large audience with varied experiences of homelessness.

You can access these pages by clicking on the links below:

Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn | YouTube

Community guidelines

It’s important to us at The Wallich that our social media channels are a safe space for conversation.

We expect everyone who engages with or is hired by The Wallich to follow our community guidelines while interacting with our social media channels:

• We welcome debate and opinions, however our remit is to stand up for the rights of people who have any type of experience of homelessness. Therefore, we may remove content which seeks to deny a person’s rights, as well as other off-topic content.
• Be respectful of others’ opinions and personal experiences.
• Keep private contact information, such as phone numbers and addresses, out of your posts.
• Please use polite and respectful language when talking about individuals, groups or organisations.
• We will not tolerate derogatory language, hate speech or personal attacks, as well as distressing images, videos or links.
• Do not post content that is discriminatory, obscene, inflammatory, harassing, hateful, threatening, profane or personally abusive.
• Do not post anything that may cause offence on the grounds of an individual’s protected characteristic – for example, gender, race, religion or belief, ethnic or national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, working status or disability.
• Do not post anything that could be libellous or defamatory. If an accusation is made against a named person, for example at a member of staff at a project, the comment will be hidden. Please send email communications@thewallich.net if you wish to discuss an incident with a named individual or make a formal complaint.

The Wallich community guidelines are applicable to comments and direct messaging.

How we enforce community guidelines – Comments

Where possible, we use automatic filters to facilitate a comment approvals process.

Comments on Facebook, for example, are generally hidden until approved. This is to uphold our community guidelines and to protect our staff, the people we support and our wider audience.

Hidden comments may still be visible to the individual but won’t be visible to others using the site.

The Wallich will use its own discretion to determine whether posts to our social media channels breach our guidelines.

We reserve the right to hide or delete comments made on our channels, as well as block users who persistently prohibit these guidelines.

If a comment is hidden or deleted, a record will be kept and the individual will be contacted to indicate the breach of community guidelines.

On rare occasions, users may be blocked from the page if the nature of their comments does not change, but we will always warn the individual of this and highlight our guidelines before doing so.

In matters of persistent defamation about an individual, group or organisation. A Cease and Desist Letter may be considered through the appropriate channels.

How we enforce community guidelines – Direct messaging

The Wallich’s code of conduct also applies to direct messaging. Users who breach the code of conduct will be referred to The Wallich social media code of conduct policy before their enquiry is resolved.

We reserve the right to users who persistently prohibit these guidelines, with particular attention to use of hateful language towards the moderator of The Wallich’s accounts.

Complaints and who to contact

To make a formal complaint about The Wallich’s social media moderation, for questions about our social media guidelines or see something which breaches our community guidelines, contact communications@thewallich.net