Terms of Engagement
The Allied Health Professions (AHPs) are regulated by the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC), hence the terms of engagement in spaces managed by #Fair4AHPs have been aligned to HCPC Standards. #Fair4AHPs spaces may be open to people who are outside of HCPC jurisdiction, hence we have made effort to provide signposting to resources which are publicly available. Resources by HCPC which would be particularly relevant to engagement in this space would be those addressing person-centredness, raising concerns, openness, and honesty, as well as communication and social media.
Person-Centredness
Persons belonging to under-represented groups are at the front and centre of all #Fair4AHPs spaces. Our foremost priority is to promote and protect the interests of under-represented communities, and we agree with the HCPC that the “safety and wellbeing of service users always comes before professional or other loyalties“. This principle is applicable to all virtual spaces established to facilitate activities under the #Fair4AHPs banner (e.g., Community Loop, video conferencing spaces).
The #Fair4AHPs team reserve the right to suspend, disable, block, and remove accounts belonging to people who have behaved in ways which pose risks to persons from under-represented groups, which would compromise the integrity of our spaces. Our criteria for risk is based on impact rather than intention.
Raising Concerns, Openness and Honesty
We recognise that missteps are an inevitable part of human interactions – and agree with HCPC’s position that AHPs have a Duty of Candour to fulfill. To paraphrase from HCPC’s guidance video (30:50-33:40): being open and honest about mistakes can play a key part in maintaining the trust of the public – which is particularly important when interacting with people from communities which have developed institutional mistrust resulting from historic and systemic oppression (i.e., people from under-represented groups in the UK context). Medical mistrust has been identified as a determinant of health inequities affecting such populations, hence we as AHPs also have a duty of care to our service users not to contribute towards this.
We hope that participants in #Fair4AHPs activities will refer to the HCPC guidance in the event that any contentious interactions should arise and take the necessary actions to prevent further escalation.
Communication and Social Media
HCPC provides extensive guidance on the use of social media for communication, including segments 43:25-51:30 of this webinar recording.
Particularly noteworthy reminders include: “You must use all forms of communication appropriately and responsibly, including social media and networking sites.” and “You must make sure that your conduct justifies the public’s trust and confidence in you and your profession.”
Just as HCPC encourages people to “Keep posting!” We also encourage you to participate as actively as possible in our Community Loop as you are able to. Generally we think that so long as we all remember to act in the best interests of the persons who should be centred in #Fair4AHPs spaces, and maintain openness and honesty around raising and addressing concerns – meeting HCPC standards relevant to Communication and Social Media should not be an issue.
We hope you will enjoy being a part of our journey and look forward to engaging further with you!
Recommended Resources
Privacy Policy
This page addresses privacy policy specific to the use of the #Fair4AHPs website. The current #Fair4AHPs web administrator is Meera Sharma.
#BMEstreetAHPs might also utilise spaces hosted by external platforms to facilitate our activities including but not restricted to Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Twitter, SendInBlue, and Eventbrite. Under those circumstances, the data use and privacy policies of those platforms take precedence. We will do our best to ensure that platform choice and methods of engagement are as aligned to GDPR compliance as possible.
Comments
Only registered users on our Community Loop will be able to leave comments. We store the personal information that all registered users provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except change their username – the username cannot be changed). Website administrators can also see and edit that information. We also record visitors’ IP addresses and browser user agent strings to help with spam detection.
An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it – see the Gravatar service privacy policy here. If you are a Gravatar user, your profile picture will be visible to site users in the context of your comment after it has been approved.
Media
If you upload images to our webspace, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.
Cookies
If you visit our login page, a temporary cookie will be enabled to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.
Logging in will also enable several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen option cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.
If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.
Embedded content from other websites
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
Who we share your data with
If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the reset email. We also use SendInBlue.com to enable GDPR-compliance in our Community Looping Process.
What rights you have over your data
If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
Where your data is sent
Visitor comments (by people who are not registered users) may be checked through an automated spam detection service.
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