Silva Care’s Annual Quality Assurance Questionnaire – 2023 Supported Living

Silva Care’s Annual Quality Assurance Questionnaire – 2023 Supported Living

Within the first week of June 2023, all service users who access our Supported Living services were posted letters inviting them to complete our accessible online Quality Assurance Questionnaire. The letters were sent on behalf of the manager who run’s their service and gave the option to have a paper copy sent to them if that was their preferred material.

The letters were addressed to the people we support, but we know that some of the responses would have been completed by their parents or carers who advocate for them.

The questionnaire was open until 25^th July 2023, when the link was disabled in order to be able to collate the data which was collected. By this date we had received 17 responses to our online questionnaire. There were no additional paper questionnaires which were returned to the service.

Questions were presented alongside appropriate Widgit symbols and were written in simple English with no jargon. Each question had multiple choice answers which were also presented with a Widgit Symbol for each.

Comments and Actions taken:

Those completing the questionnaire had the option to leave a comment and their name with their contact details if they chose to. Please see below summary of the comments and where possible the actions that have been taken.

Compliments:

You said: We enjoy our mornings and days out and spending quality time as a family and we are so grateful to silva care for all their help and support. Thank you all so much!”

You Said:  thank you so much for being so great with * I really appreciate the support you provide him. I’m very happy he is in supported living with Silva care, and I know he is safe.

You said: thank you for helping me, especially with my visa. My staff are the best.

You said: I’m so glad * has wonderful support staff around him and he is very happy in his new home.”

You said: “We are kept informed of any changes or issues and do appreciate the support of the senior management”.

Suggestions:

You said: Sometimes things need fixing in the house and Silva Care can be slow to support with this.

We did: Silva Care do have a maintenance team to support all our bases across Bristol, and sometimes it is possible for our supported living services to access the team. Unfortunately, as with any tenancy agreement, repairs and breakdowns are the responsibility of the landlord and cosmetic alterations can be made by the tenants, with permission of the landlord. Silva Care Ltd are not the landlord of any of our supported living properties, and solely provide the care and support services. Where possible, we will try to help with maintenance requests, when we can but sadly as this is not included within packages of care this is a service that we may need to charge for.  We have developed a maintenance board so that the maintenance team can chase up any repairs .

You Said: One response indicated that they were not aware of how to make a complaint if they needed to.

We did: Our Complaints and compliments accessible form and process is currently displayed on our web site, and we have posters up in our services that are not people’s own homes. We have also publicised our complaints process in some of our newsletters.  Details on the procedure are also in our welcome pack, however, we do appreciate that some service users started services prior to the welcome pack being used. We are, however, always happy to look at how we can improve our communication, and to ensure we receive feedback. We view complaints as an important way to positively improve our services. We will include a section on how to make a complaint at our next service user and parent/carer forums. At the forums we will also be asking you for suggestions on how you would like us to promote our complaints/compliments/suggestions further.

You said: Within the questionnaire one person responded that they felt we do not meet their cultural and religious needs.

We did:  We were sorry to see that someone felt their cultural and religious needs had not been met, it is one of our most important aims to support each individual to be their authentic self and celebrate their chosen religion or beliefs. We aim to embrace many cultural and religious celebrations within our activities throughout the year and note special holidays that the people we support might like to either celebrate or learn more about. We are always open to feedback and suggestions from the people we support and their families/carers in how we can incorporate an individual’s culture or religion within the support we provide and have found it a privilege to learn and implement these suggestions within support plans. We believe that uniqueness is powerful, and we want to celebrate and champion the uniqueness of all the people we support. Unfortunately, the questionnaire did not give any specific details of unmet needs for us to investigate. Some of the ways we support people currently include support to attend places of worship, celebrating many cultural and religious celebrations, meeting different dietary needs, training for all of our staff. We would love to hear any idea you may have on how we can improve. Please email mildred.mhlanga@silvacare.org.uk with any suggestions. We will also discuss at our next Service user and Parent carer forums.

Please see below the questions asked and the responses given in form of pie charts and percentages. The data has been collated and summarised by Beth Slinger, Quality Assurance and Training Development Manager. Please note, those who were completing the questionnaire were not required to answer all the questions if they chose not to, and they were able to give more than one answer to a question if they chose to.