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The University helps the UK's leading social care provider to improve its services

A multi-disciplinary team of experts/researchers from the University of Kent has developed an innovative methodology to support the development of a Service User Satisfaction Survey that will enable Turning Point, the UK's leading social care provider for people with substance misuse problems, mental health difficulties and learning disabilities, to evaluate its services from a service user perspective.

Information obtained from the survey development methodology, which breaks new ground in terms of service user involvement and inclusive methodology, will help Turning Point, an organisation that provides over 250 services, to monitor its performance, lobby government for further funding and make important changes to, and market, its service. Turning Point worked with more than 100,000 people in 2007.

The project team was drawn from the University's Tizard Centre, Kent Institute of Medical and Health Sciences, and Centre for Health Services Studies. It included experts in the fields of drug and alcohol addiction, learning disability, and public health and mental health.

Dr Rachel Forrester-Jones, Senior Lecturer in Community Care at the Tizard Centre and principle investigator of the project, said: 'Rather than simply interview service users about what they thought of the service, we involved them right from the beginning of the project by asking them which questions they felt should go in the questionnaire - in other words, questions that reflected their own issues and concerns.

'We also interviewed key stakeholders including internal managers of Turning Point and external commissioners to provide useful information at both local and national levels of the organisation. The findings from our work will support Turning Point to develop a survey that will collect data on how satisfied service users are with the services they receive from Turning Point on a yearly basis, charting improvements and changes in user satisfaction.'

Mhairi Macpherson, Assistant Chief Executive, from Turning Point said: 'The feasibility study used an inclusive methodology, and has enabled service users to identify issues that are important to them. Turning Point has recently reviewed its strategy around service user involvement and also recently launched a framework for service user involvement across the organisation. This work demonstrates our commitment to involving service users at all levels of service delivery and development.'

The Service User Satisfaction questions were piloted with the help of paid advisors who are also using Turning Point services. The pilot provided some positive feedback from Turning Point service users on the usefulness and appropriateness of the questions as well as a variety of aspects of the service they had experienced and also in their views about Turning Point more generally.

Contact: mediaoffice@kent.ac.uk

Story published at 3:29pm 17 April 2008