Eleanor Broadbent, Equality Diversity and Client Involvement Officer
Lyndsay Swales, Quality and Safety Lead
Jo Denning, Regional Operations Manager, Head of Quality and Safety
Susie Maguire, Director of Operations, Quality and Safety and Deputy CEO.
This week our Expert Voices and Experience Network did a session on audits, what audits are and how could Client’s be involved in audits.
Susie Maguire introduced herself to the group and gave an overview of her role and some information on whistle blowing.
Jo Denning also joined the group and told the experts what her role is and also gave an over view of what the Quality and Safety Team does and what audits are. The group were engaged with the session and asked lots of questions about health and safety and also about how St Anne’s can improve services for Clients.
The Client’s then broke in to groups and worked on what they thought was important to ask during an audit to Client’s, staff and managers of services. Some of their suggestions are included below.
There was a lot of discussion around how Client’s may feel when someone comes to their home or service to audit and how we can ensure we don’t make people feel uncomfortable. One suggestion was to call ahead to see if certain clothing made people feel uncomfortable or if people did not like certain strong smells like perfume or may have sensory needs that have to be considered.
Client’s also discussed the importance of asking positive leading questions on audits as they felt that people are always quick to jump on to negative things and that the positives for Clients and Staff should always been taken in to account and recorded.
We also discussed how Clients can be more involved and people said they would like to have a role in audits where they came and observed staff and Client interactions and communicated with Clients to offer peer support. They felt also this may offer Clients a way where they felt they could feedback more freely, and this could be captured in to the audits.
After the 26th of September when the Expert group has its graduation, we will then meet monthly and audits will be planned with Client’s who want to be involved in advanced. We would like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that going forward we welcome any other Client that wants to join the group at any point to be involved in future activities.
Next week session we are looking at the Client survey and also revealing the self-designed logo.
Many thanks for reading