Community Guidelines
The Counsellors’ Staffroom is a welcoming and private membership space for counsellors and psychotherapists to find support and develop professionally alongside peers.
The Counsellors’ Staffroom is an online space designed to bridge gaps in support, resources, and community for therapists and supervisors. Our website serves as the central hub for our expanding range of offerings. We have exciting plans for the future and we’re relying on you to help us grow, maintain, and curate these spaces. With this in mind, please take time to read and digest these Community Guidelines before registering to join our community spaces.
If you encounter any activity on our platform or in our events that isn’t in the spirit of these Guidelines, is inappropriate or offensive, please contact the Staffroom Team.
We are proud of our community and its culture of support and respect. Our members’ positivity, commitment and willingness to bring empathy, experiences and emotion to our groups and spaces has created this wonderful community and resource for therapists.
With this in mind, we ask everyone registering to join our membership or to book our events to:
Be supportive and understanding
- Understand that everyone in our membership spaces and events is learning and growing.
- Avoid shaming those who we believe have made a mistake, and those who may have reacted with an emotional response.
- Consider if it feels more appropriate to scroll on by and accept that some content isn’t for you. Our membership platform allows you to opt out of spaces that aren’t of interest or might be difficult for you. We also have spaces and groups that require members to actively opt-in, if you wish to join and participate in them.
- Explain how you have experienced any content that has impacted you as a starting point to deal with a rupture, if you feel able to.
- Report content or situations to Zena if it does not feel safe or appropriate to respond calmly or scroll on by.
Keep yourself and others safe when sharing information in our membership spaces or events
- Treat anything shared on our platform or in our events confidentially.
- Navigate our spaces mindfully. The Counsellors’ Staffroom is a supportive, private community, but as with all online content, please understand there are no guarantees in online spaces and all information shared in our private community or in our events is shared at your own risk.
- Be mindful with emotive content that could trigger others and please put a warning at the top of your blog, resource, chat comment or other content. We know this is a tricky ask, because we can never tell what might trigger other people, but please consider the potential impact on others before sharing any content.
- Not mention specific clients - we do not allow any content about clients or potential clients, including minimal information, to be posted in our communities or discussed in our events. If posting about a referral, please focus on the requirements of the therapist, not a description of the client.
- Not share sensitive and private information about non-members on this platform or at our events.
- Consider how your content, resource, blog or comments on our platform or in our events might make others feel about being present in our community.
Our primary aim as a group is to provide a safe environment for everyone who has registered with us and to model anti-discriminatory spaces. This aim takes priority over the right to have certain conversations, express some opinions, debate emotive subjects or ask questions that may adversely impact other members. In practice this means:
- Avoid academically or insensitively debating a topic that is or may be a lived experience of anyone in our membership community or at our events.
- Avoid using ‘othering’ language.
- Avoid asking anyone from marginalised groups to explain why something may be insensitive or problematic. It is our own responsibility to educate ourselves about discrimination and oppression.
- We know we will not always get things right - our aim is to learn and grow together as a community and the Staffroom will facilitate this growth with training and support.
Be community minded
- Part of what makes the Counsellors’ Staffroom a success is your willingness to help others, answer questions, provide content and be engaged with each other, so please be active and participate in our community or at our events if you feel able to.
- Be honest and transparent.
- Use our membership space to network and let other people know about you and/or your practice.
- If you want to directly contact a community member or a someone attending our events, ask if they are happy to accept your message before contacting them.
- There are dedicated spaces for business development within our community membership platforms. Please ensure you are aware of any specific space guidelines before promoting your business. Do not share or promote your businesses or a business you are affiliated with without prior permission, unless invited to do so or in response to a member’s request for recommendations. Any inappropriate content may be removed without prior warning.
- Be aware that referral schemes and codes are not permitted unless permission has been sought from the Staffroom Team before posting. These would need to offer benefits that are not available through direct access (i.e. specific Staffroom benefits) to be approved.
- Ensure any content or resources created by a third-party and shared by you is only shared with the permission in writing of the original creator of that content. Where external resources are shared, please ensure you include a link to the information source.
- Zena and other members of The Staffroom Team, will aim to be as active as possible on our platform and in our events. However, we are a small team building the Staffroom community alongside our therapy work and family life. Please be aware we may not be able to respond to your emails or requests immediately, especially during busy periods or at weekends. Your patience is appreciated.
- The Staffroom Team strives to approach everyone in our community and events spaces with support and understanding. However, if necessary, we may delete posts or comments we perceive are not in line with our ethos of support and safety. We reserve the right to suspend or remove members’ or registered non-members’ access to our membership or events booking spaces at our discretion if repeated complaints are received about their behaviour in our community spaces or events, or we believe their behaviour is not in line with these Community Guidelines and is adversely impacting others.
We thank you for reading these guidelines and look forward to seeing you in our community and events soon.