[Philippa Kemp]

Hello, Philippa, one of the OPFS moderators here. Sorry for the late response to your thread. We are deliberately hands off in terms of this forum because we want it to be peer support led, apart from if there is a need for us to intervene for safety reasons. Having said this, obviously we should have been a little quicker off the mark this time! I would also say that we are very interested to hear back from parents whether there is anything we can do to increase engagement on the forum. Do let us know and we will do our best to make improvements where we can.

In terms of meeting up in person, it is great that you are doing this – we know how isolating it can be to be parenting or caring alone. I have spoken to our Edinburgh service to see if there are plans for any social meetups/outings in the pipeline. They have a newsletter which includes news and events in the local area and have suggested I send on the link to sign up so that you will be informed of any plans in the pipeline as well as updates on what is available to parents in Edinburgh. The sign up link is http://eepurl.com/c_4FI5

In terms of community guidelines for meetups, the only ones we have here are those that govern the online space for the forum and would not apply to meetups as the forum is built around anonymity and chatting online. I think we would just remind you to ensure that names and email addresses are not shared on the forum itself but that you share personal details in WhatsApp or similar by sharing a link to a WhatsApp group if you are planning to meet in person.

Does this help?

Thanks for reaching out,
Philippa