Our Responsibilities
At Health Heard, we take our responsibilities to you really seriously.
As well as our policies for what you can expect from us, how we treat your information, and for how we carry out our research and learn what works best, we also have policies that cover how we deliver our services and support:
Accessibility statement
Taking care
Using Images
Here are these policies.
We are pleased to say that due to our efforts with our platform and content, our site is compliant with the accessibility standard WGAC 2.1 aside from the following minor issues:.
Our text resize buttons works however they are not tagged as they should be. Our social links tool works but has 'empty links'.
These tools are provided by a different company. We are working to replace them as soon as we can.
There are minor issues with the way that some page content images are labelled that may affect those using text headers, but that won’t prevent them from reading text or image alt text.
Please note, that as a pilot service, we are not yet able to put all of our planned accessibility features in place. We are however doing as much as we can to make our site, our service and the way that we communicate with you as accessible and easy to use as possible.
We recognise and respect the needs arising from your disabilities and impairments, as well as from lesser understood issues such as auditory processing or sensory overload, and take every reasonable action to ensure such needs are met.
Should you have any difficulty using the service or if you would like to make a suggestion, please let us know.
Though we don’t provide care in your home, or support you with day to day living, we still follow the principles of person-centred care:
Declare the absolute value of all human lives
Commit to way of doing things that sees each person as individual and unique
Seek to understand the world from the perspectives of people who use our service
Offer a supportive service that enables everyone to feel as the best they can
Because of your health issues, you might have a reduced capacity to understand what is being said to you, what is expected from you and to make decisions.
Though we can’t act on your behalf, we do aim to respect your rights by supporting you to do as much as you can for yourself, and finding the help you need for what you find difficult.
We use a range of ways to communicate with you, and make things clear, including images and video. We also use staged, or structured communication to make things easier to understand and to avoid overwhelming you.
Our optional one-to-one support is designed to provide even more help with communication- and with understanding your options and making choices.
However you use the Health Heard service, we will respect your wishes, and not make assumptions about you, or what you want to happen.We will support you to make decisions, and respect them.
Our service, site and support aim to be:
- Calm
- Clear
- Consistent
- Caring
- Capable
- Confidence giving
And we aim to deliver our services in ways that
- support your best interests and that of others
- we have the skills and expertise to deliver safely. (This means we may need to say no to requests from time to time.)
- avoid harm or the potential to result in harm
If you tell us about something that is happening to you, and that could cause you serious harm, or puts you at risk, we won't tell anyone else, but we will encourage you to speak with someone when you are ready to.
Many of our team are neurodivergent ourselves, and respect differences in communication, and how you experience and navigate the world, and how you wish to communicate with us.
We also understand how neurodivergence can affect your:
- Communication and self expression
- Confidence - in yourself and in your actions
- Agency and standing up for yourself
- Speaking up and being heard
- Awareness of yourself and what’s around you
And what it’s like to navigate a world that was not really designed for you. That’s one of the reasons Health Heard came to be!
We aim to show sensitivity to your needs and to promote a positive experience of Heath Heard.. We also aim to be as flexible and adaptable as possible in how we act and communicate with you, and to
- respect your communication choices
- respect cultural differences
- support your gender preferences, and how you choose to identify
- seek to act in ways that support your mental health, and wellbeing and help you to avoid stress.
- and above all, respect your health needs.
We consider ourselves to be a trauma informed service, and will not exclude anyone from the service on grounds of signs of heightened emotion, distress or unexpected ways of acting or communication. We do have a duty to protect the people who work for us, so if the way you act is a risk to them, we may have to regretfully refer you to another service.
If we make a mistake, or if the way we deliver the service causes distress, we will keep a note of this, but anonymised. This helps us offer a better service in the future.
We will also take the same care to ensure that the people who work for us are well looked after, and record any issues that arise in the same way.
Please note we are not a Personal Care company, so are not bound by the Health and Social Care Act, however follow the principles of it wherever possible.
The images of people on our site are portrayed by actors. We have ensured that these representations reflect the diversity of our service users because visibility and representation are significant to us. Due to privacy concerns and risks of people's images being misused, we don't share images of actual users of our service.
We may also use original commissioned illustrations, stock library images and AI generated images in our social media and other content.
Where possible, we will clearly indicate which, and give credit.
We may also repost and share social media including photographs, graphic images and illustrations. We aim to add credits and link to the image creator, where this is known. We are not responsible for the content we repost, and reposting does not imply endorsement.
Our AI image prompts avoid mentioning living artists. We endorse move to compensate artists for their exploited work and pay a fee for our AI images with the expectation of contributing to this.
Why do we have these policies?
Right now, the rules for digital health and support services aren't very clear, and they're not being enforced well. But these rules are going to get stricter in the future.
We believe this is a good thing, and that all digital health services and products should help promote these standards. So, we've decided to get ahead of the game and start following these standards even before they become law.
These standards have been developed using
- Industry best practice
- Our lived experience
- User centred design approaches
- Listening to people like you.
And through certified training from
https://www.skillsforhealth.org.uk
https://www.centreforcoaching.com
If any of this isn’t clear, or you need this information presented in another way, please let us know.