Involving users
Carr-Gomm is proud of our track record in user involvement. In 1998 we won our first award from TPAS for Participation in Practice. Since 1999 we have had service users sitting on our board of trustees and we have a programme of meetings and creative activities designed to encourage service users to get involved in the way we deliver our services.
In 2004, our service users voted to change the term we use to describe them - from service user to client. We now use the term client to describe all those people who receive a service from Carr-Gomm, whether they are our tenants or users of day services or floating support services.
"Clients from our focus groups told us that calling them a ‘service user’ had a negative connotation for them and reminded them of being ill and in health services. We held a ballot for a new name and the winner was ‘client’."
Carr-Gomm's approach to client involvement is to work in partnership with clients at all levels of the organisation, and to improve and develop services in response to their views, needs and interests. We recently trained all our staff – operational and administrative – in empowerment techniques.
The benefits of client involvement are much greater than the resources we invest. Involving our clients in discussing the way that Carr-Gomm delivers its services, means that we can provide a more meaningful service to our clients that better suits their needs.
We are always trying to respond better to our clients’ needs and to increase the number of ways that they can have an influence on improving the organisation. Our newest development is training clients to work with Supporting People teams during QAF validation visits. We are piloting this training over the summer, 2005.
Client Involvement Team
All Carr-Gomm staff are responsible for empowering clients to be involved in the organisation. However, we also have a team of dedicated Regional Client Involvement Officers, who facilitate involvement through training staff and clients and leading on national projects.
The Head of Client Involvement is responsible for implementing Carr-Gomm’s Client Involvement Strategy, which outlines ways in which Carr-Gomm will communicate better with service users and enable more people to have a voice in the running of organisation.
For more information about client involvement in Carr-Gomm, contact our Client Involvement Assistant, based at our West regional office in Bristol, on 0117 933 9950.
Training for other organisations
Our expertise in client involvement is widely recognised in the supported housing and voluntary sector and is reflected by the fact that we were invited to run training courses in the subject by TPAS.
We now offer support to other organisations through our consultancy and training arm, open the Consult Carr-Gomm micro-site in a new window for more information.
