What is your charities name and Mission

We're Contact a Family.  Over the past 30 years we have been providing support, advice and information for families with disabled children, no matter what their condition or disability.

Our mission and purpose is to remove the barriers imposed by society which prevent families with disabled children achieving their full potential, and to empower these families to live the lives they want to lead.

Why do you use Facebook and which services do you use?

There are over 22 million (and counting…) UK Facebook users in a population of around 61 million people. The service has clearly integrated itself everyday communications so it stands to reason that if a great deal of people are choosing to connect with each other using this platform, we should have a presence so we can tap into this diverse and ever expanding community.

Parents of disabled chlidren often report they experience feelings of isolation and with the commitments surrounding raising a child with additional needs, it can be a struggle accessing conventional support channels due to time, financial, childcare and at times emotional restraints.

We primarily use Facebook Pages (www.facebook.com/contactafamily) and whilst we don't have the largest commnuity (2,119 fans to date), we do have a very friendly, engaged network of parents who become fans to access parent-to-parent support, information on conditions, personal stories, advice directly from our helpline team as well as news on disability issues, events and campaigns - all of which seek to empower families with the message that they are not alone and that there is support out there.

Some of our fans had not heard of Contact a Family as a charity, until they stumbled upon the fan page in a Facebook search, so it really has been a great help in raising awareness of the work we do.

Have Facebook supporters done something wonderful for you?

For us, right now, the key thing is that the Facebook supporters are doing something wonderful for each other. The parents see the page as a hub for family linking and meeting new people they may not have necessarily met within the confines of physical everyday interaction. We have champions who regularly post on our wall to make new members feel welcome (effectively doing our job for us!).  As the group are so responsive, we can always count on our fans to take part in consultations and engage in discussion that helps to streamline our wider strategic goals.

Do you consider Facebook an important part of your work online?

Most definitely! Offline, we often work very closely with our families, whether it's through our helpline, family workers, parent representatives or the development of our publications, but online Facebook is our closest interaction with families. What we are working towards now, is creating more of a synergy between our on- and offline work.

Recently, we became involved in supporting an adopted shopping trolley campaign that we became aware of from conversations on the Facebook wall. The real life effects of the social network are really starting to emerge.

Have you encountered any problems using Facebook?

Oh yes! More to do with understanding the audience and adapting what some may perceive to be a somewhat rigid interface on Facebook. We started off with a Facebook group a couple of years ago. It got members, but low interactions. Groups also did not have any analytics attached to it, so it was a bit more difficult to quantify what was working and what wasn't.

Other than that, it's been fantastic and the support team have been very helpful when we needed them. Even using what is ostensibly a post-moderated forum, it's been a fairly straight-forward community to manage with regard to safety and privacy.

Have do you have any tips for other charities?

Funnily enough, my best tip would be one I stole from John Carnell of Technicavita and Bullying UK which is to identify the difference between 'signal' and 'noise'. Give your audience content they can interact with to establish a constructive dialog.

Also, be consistent in your 'uptime'.  Many organisations see social media as a back-burner communications tool and that is steadily changing, but I feel that if you commit to regularly keeping activity on your page going, people will stay and engage in what they will perceive to be a dynamic information source.

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Would your charity / Non-profit like to take part? If so follow this link for instructions: Facebook Charity Interview questions