The chat rooms are a place to communicate, share thoughts, experiences and socialise with others.
The blog is now a separate area, so you will need to register for both if you want to access these 2 areas. Here is the blog link http://www.diabetescounselling.com.au/blog/
Forums
You will also need to register separately to use the forums, so hop across there if you want to post at the boards http://www.diabetescounselling.com.au/yabb/YaBB.pl
Group chats
We hold a variety of counselling groups, such as our Weight Matters groups – these are closed groups with a set session time and programme. Find out more about the Weight Matters groups here: http://www.diabetescounselling.com.au/weightmatters/weight.html
There are also a number of casual chat times you can join at any stage – held in the main chat room – “The Lounge”. These are:
- Type 1 diabetes – moderator Denise- Friday nights 9 pm EST
- Type 2 diabetes – moderator Janine – Thursday nights 7.30 pm EST
We are working on a parents’ group and a pregnancy and parenting group – please let us know if interested in moderating these sessions [email protected]
Please check your local time.
Remember these are casual sessions and there is no counsellor or diabetes educator present. These are purely social times for you to get together with people with similar issues. These are not counselling or education sessions and the moderator is not there to provide advice. They are simply there to make sure someone is in the room and keeping an eye on things; and can contact us if needed.
Please do not ask them for diabetes management advice, such as changes to medication or for counselling around any issues.
Contact us at [email protected] if you have any questions about your management or problems you want to discuss with a counsellor.
Feel free to share your personal wisdom about life with diabetes and its management – as that is what it is all about!
Guidelines and agreement for use
In the interests of keeping these chat rooms a positive experience for all, please keep the following guidelines in mind:
- Please refrain from using profanities, racist comments, prejudice or any kind of language that may offend. This is not a dating website or an adult meeting spot.
- Please avoid inappropiate topics. This is a kid friendly chat room!
- Please be considerate of others chatting, and their views and opinions. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
- Please give everyone the opportunity to communicate and don’t ‘flood’ the chat room preventing others from using it effectively.
- Please be aware that the administrator reserves the right to remove a user from the chat .
- Please contact us [email protected] with any concerns or problems so we can sort them out
How to use the chat
This is a new chat room and works differently to the ones we have had previously.
If you are a current chat room user, you will need to register again to use these new rooms. The old rooms no longer exist.
Please click on the link below to register. You will be asked to complete two forms;
- A pre-registration survey which gives us information that is important to gather for our funding body and also lets us know which areas you need access to.
- Then the registration form for the chat-rooms.
We will be sent this form and will then know that you have registered. Until we “give you a voice” you will be able to enter and see the chat, but not post yet. We will then activate this membership for you – and “give you a voice” in the main chat room (and any other relevant rooms) so you can chat.
As with the old rooms, there is a main chat room “The Lounge” which is open to all members at all times. If you are also in a weight matters group, we will activate membership to the relevant chat room.
If you have type 1 diabetes, we will activate access to the “type 1” room and if you have type 2 diabetes, to the “type 2” room.
You may enter the "Foyer" and chat whilst waiting for your access to the main rooms. This is a holding room so ongoing chats will not be here. The Lounge is the central place to meet up with people. You may enter the rooms once registered but will not be able to type until we give you a voice. We will be notified of your registration and will “give you a voice” as soon as possible – please remember this is manually done.
From time to time there may be private rooms which are used for personal or group counselling sessions – you will not be able to access these rooms at all unless it is relevant to you.
Functions
There are a range of great functions in these chat rooms. Take some time to play with the new chat and set it up in a way that you like. It is your space to connect with others. Don’t worry if you are new to chat rooms, it may seem daunting, but once you play with the functions you will find it fairly easy and great fun!
- Sound – you can alter this and other functions from your personal control panel (user CP)
- Emoticons – click on the emoticon link and the box will open, this will then minimise and stay open on your screen. Simply click on the box again and select your next emoticon. You may close this box at any time
- Fonts – you can change the size, colour and format of your font – it will display in the chat in the way you want. This means if you use really big pink writing that is how it will come across to all other members in the chat – so choose your font carefully!! Feel free to play with this to see what you like to look of and use different fonts in chats to bring across your mood and thoughts – in a chat room, the use of colour, size of text, emoticons and so on, enable us to feel like we can “hear” each others voices and that is a really important tool
- Themes – You can also change the way the rooms look from your end (will not change other users screens) – perhaps you prefer a black or a white background, etc – go to your personal control panel (User CP) where you can play with a range of things and change them. You will need to refresh to see the updated themes
- Personal messages – you can have an “offline” message with other members at any time and the system will notify you during your chat if you have a message from another member. As with the emoticons, you can leave this open during your time in the rooms or close it off when finished.
And finally, please always contact us with any concerns or feedback – unless you tell us we don’t know!
Log-In to the chat rooms
Register
for the chat rooms
