We are delighted to announce the re-opening of the Sands Forum.  We would like to express our thanks for your patience and understanding over the recent months.  In addition to our comprehensive review process of the Forum and its Guidelines, we have also invested quite considerably financially in this very important support resource.  The software platform has been upgraded and is now more stable, and provides a number of new features and tools.   

When accessing the Forum for the first time, you will notice that the Forum now has its own dedicated homepage.  We will now be able to keep visitors informed and up to date with our news, campaigns and local events.  The clear style reflects the Sands brand and reinforces the synergy between all the Sands websites.

As you will see we have been determined to ensure it retains the same familiar look and feel.   We have carried out a very minor ‘spring-clean’ and archived some very old or little used threads, but as promised, the boards and their content largely remain untouched. 

Due to the extensive upgrade and the hard work our small technical team has carried out over the last few months, we hope users will benefit from and appreciate the new facilities and tools the Forum now offers.

Every user now has a more comprehensive profile page that can be personalised with photo albums and an enhanced message facility.  Personal privacy settings and levels are set personally by the user enabling them to only give access to others as they choose.    

One of the most exciting new features is the new Forum ‘Community’ area.  Users can access this new area by clicking on the ‘Community’ button found to the right of the ‘Calendar’ button.  

Users will find that with the new ‘Community Groups’, whilst they work similarly to the Boards, and are categorized in the same familiar way, they are now able to truly protect themselves from specific areas that they do not feel comfortable viewing.  This new feature we feel, is a real positive step forward, allowing the user to get the maximum benefit. 

Three main Boards have been moved into the ‘Community Groups’ section; Supporting you through trying again, Supporting you through another pregnancy and beyond and the original Sands Forum Community.  All these Boards and sub-boards have now been recreated as individual Groups within the Community area.  We were really hopefully that we would find a way of transferring the content of these Boards, but unfortunately this has not been possible.  For the time being they remain visible, but they have been set to ‘view only’ to encourage users to use the new Groups for support.

Finally, users will notice the prominent Blog button located at the top of the Forum.  Again, the privacy settings are set and controlled personally by the user allowing them to decide who, if anyone may have access to view their personal entries.  This is the perfect place for a Book of Remembrance and/or Personal Diary. Users who already have started some sort of personal diary can copy and paste their entries to their new Blog and continue where they left off.

We hope that all our Forum users will get to grips with the new improved settings and tools with very little difficulty, but if you do have any problems please do not hesitate to contact the Technical team for assistance. 

Finally, we do ask, for your continued patience and understanding over the next few weeks whilst everyone familiarises themselves with the new features of the Forum, this is not just our users but our increased team of Forum Moderators and Technical Support team that we have recruited to ensure the smooth running of the Forum. 

Whilst we hope there won’t be, we recognize there are likely to be some teething problems and we ask that you bear with us. 

If you do have a problem, need help, or have a query relating to the Forum please use either of the email addresses listed below. If you are unsure about who would be best to respond to your needs, please email the Forum Moderator Team in the first instance, who will forward any queries on to the relevant department as necessary.

Thank you.

Sands, the stillbirth and neonatal death charity

Forum Moderator Team                    forum.moderators(at)uk-sands.org

Technical Support Team                     forum.tech.support(at)uk-sands.org

Visit the Sands Forum click here