Agenda item

Report ACH23-020

The Committee considered a report providing an overview of the Resident Voice Project and Working Group, both established in October 2022.

The Resident Voice Project aimed to focus on engagement with residents and service users of Adult Social Care, as well as providers of care services in Bromley, with the objective of strengthening commissioning and co-production. Various methods of capturing the service user voice would be explored, these included using digital platforms to capture feedback, along with face-to-face engagement with residents, consulting on different areas of the Adult Social Care business. The project had established a Resident Voice Group that met every six weeks to consider new resident engagement activities and to share lessons learned to strengthen business development in Adult Social Care. Current group members included officers and team leaders across the department, with an aim of establishing wide representation across the Service.

The Bromley Safeguarding Adults Board Manager advised that some of the achievements so far included a Roadshow Event at The Glades shopping centre. Working with the Bromley Safeguarding Adults Board, Trading Standards and Public Protection, a two-day event was held at the centre to meet directly with members of the community. The objective was to raise the profile of the key support and safeguarding services available to the wider public, as well as capture feedback via surveys and/or direct conversations, and trends had been recorded. There had been requests to raise awareness of support services for people who were blind or hard of hearing. As a result, an engagement session had been held with members of the DeafPlus community and a similar session would be arranged with the Kent Association for the Blind. Another area identified was support and information for carers – consultation on the Carers Plan had been given a dedicated space on one of their platforms and subsequently there had been a significant increase in the responses to this survey.

The Bromley Safeguarding Adults Board Manager advised that other areas identified had included raising awareness around homelessness and the support available – this would be brought forward for discussion with the Safer Bromley Partnership. Further areas identified included tackling loneliness and safeguarding awareness sessions for professionals. With regards to the issue of self-neglect, an awareness campaign had just been published and an animation would also be produced outlining what self-neglect was and how early trends could be identified. There had also been engagement with faith-based communities groups, following which information had been requested on transitional safeguarding services. Other areas highlighted included the great work being undertaken by Quality Checkers and the outreach work completed by the Trading Standards team.

The Assistant Director for Safeguarding, Practice and Provider Relations stated that this was a good news story – talking to residents, listening to how they wanted to be engaged with and reacting to their suggestions. This all contributed towards making Bromley even better – swift progress had been made and lots of examples of responses had been provided.

The Chairman highlighted the reference made to the various community talks delivered by Trading Standards, which had been fantastic – raising awareness of financial scamming, rogue traders, and providing support information.

RESOLVED that the report providing an overview of the Resident Voice Project and Group be noted.