Before supporting somebody to share their story, you may find it helpful to read these frequently asked questions (FAQ’s) about Care Opinion. These questions & answers should give you a good basic understanding of Care Opinion and help you to answer any questions that patients or service users may ask.
What is Care Opinion?
Care Opinion is a website which allows the public to share a story about their Health and/or social care experience in a safe and simple way. The website provides a platform which automatically sends stories to the right service/s. This allows them to respond to and learn from the feedback. There is more about Care Opinion’s Vision, mission and values here.
Who Can Share Their Story?
Anyone can share their story, and all stories shared are anonymous. Care Opinion asks authors to choose their own user name and doesn’t share personal details. People feed back their thoughts about their own health/social care experience or the experience of someone they care for, a friend or a relative. Staff, volunteers and advocates are also able to share a story on behalf of a patient/service user.
What do you Mean by “Story”?
We ask people to share their experiences, positive, negative, or mixed in just the way that suits them. This feedback is different from a formal complaint or survey. We want to give people a voice and share this on our public website so that everyone can see it. Feedback can be about more than one service so that all the different people that read your story can see your whole experience.
Why are Stories Moderated?
Care Opinion reads all stories before they are published. If the moderation team are worried for any reason about a story going onto our website, we might get in contact with the story author before we publish their story. Care Opinion publishes nearly all stories but is also very careful to keep both authors and staff safe. More information about how this is done can be found here.
Who Responds to Stories?
Staff who provide the service/s will be invited to respond to a story as well as other organisations who are involved in delivering, commissioning or monitoring these services. The author of the story is then able to comment further. Members of the public are not able to respond to or comment on stories.
Is Care Opinion part of the HSE?
No, Care Opinion is an independent, not for profit social enterprise. It is independent from health and social care providers but works with them these services to support them to learn from public feedback.
Who can see stories?
Once a story has been moderated and published, it becomes visible on the website for anyone to see. It will remain visible to the public on the Care Opinion website unless the author decides to withdraw their story. In some exceptional circumstances, Care Opinion will also withdraw the story.