Contact&Connect Case Study
Wiltshire Council uses Contact&Connect: CQC Inspections to engage with people who draw on care & support to deliver more personal, relevant & successful services
BACKGROUND
In 2023, Wiltshire Council was keen to try and improve engagement with people who drew on their care and support services. Like in many councils, their feedback processes were mainly paper based, results were not as comprehensive as they would like, there were groups that were hard to reach, and it required a lot of ‘people power’ to unpick the responses and generate results. This – and their impending CQC Inspection, which had a clear focus on engaging with people who draw on ASC services – led to agreement to commission on a new Wiltshire specific Contact&Connect service to improve engagement and to bring more lived experience and feedback into service design and delivery.
THE CHALLENGE
Wiltshire Council covers a large geographical area, with both very rural and urban areas. Wiltshire wanted to work on improving their understanding of how people felt about their care packages, what worked well and where they could improve, really bringing the voice of people who used their services into ASC planning, strategy and delivery.
WHY CONTACT&CONNECT
Telephone calls remain the easiest and most accessible way to keep in touch with people. With calls going through to both landlines and mobiles, we are able to leverage not only voice calls (scheduled to fit in with contact centre availability), but also leave voice messages and (on mobiles) send texts and share web links. People do not need to be digitally literate, we can also create scripts to go to carers, advocates or family members. Across the board we are seeing between 60-75% response rates, with response data available in cloud based dashboards within minutes of the calls going out.
IMPLEMENTATION & SUPPORT
Working with colleagues at Wiltshire, a script was designed that very much aligned with the Care Act and the TLAP statements. Questions cover whether the person feels ‘Supported & Heard’; Whether they felt they had a ‘say in decisions about their care package’; Whether they are satisfied with the care they are receiving; Whether they are Safe & Able; Whether they have enough Social Contact; If they have access to good ASC Information & Advice; as well as ensuring they know who to contact if things are not quite right.
Once the script was agreed and the service was built, Wiltshire uploaded the details of the first set of people to receive the calls, and the service has grown week on week from there.
Sue Denmark, Voice Lead, Wiltshire Council
“We were working at PACE … to launch the system ahead of our CQC inspection, and the support we received helped immensely.”
OUTCOMES
Across the first 12 months of the Contact&Connect service, Contact&Connect sent calls out to over 1,250 people with the following results:
- 68% of people responded to the calls and texts
- Wiltshire could confirm that their services were well received
- 89% of people felt supported & heard
- 87% felt they were listened to and were part of care package decisions
- 88% of people were satisfied
- 81% felt safe and able
- 85% had enough social contact
- 80% knew who to contact and could access ASC information & advice
- Wiltshire can now identify individuals who do not feel safe and able and prioritise responses and resources to those people who respond negatively
- They are able to celebrate success and provide more comprehensive and inclusive feedback to improve strategy & delivery
- Where people couldn’t access ASC information & advice we are able to proactively send them a URL to the information on Wiltshire’s website
- Wiltshire has put more resources into falls prevention as a direct result of the feedback
Sue Denmark, Voice Lead, Wiltshire Council
“Hearing feedback, especially from people with safety concerns or frequent falls, helps teams identify specific areas for more focused support.”
“This is important; it gives us a reason … an accountable process for improving and continuing support.”
LOOKING AHEAD
Wiltshire continues to use the automated calls to keep in regular contact with all their ASC service users. With the service live for over 18 months now, they are able to track people across that time and satisfaction results are improving across the board. In fact, the data shows that 4% more people are satisfied with their care package by the second (6 month) call, due to the steps taken by the service to address their issues and concerns identified in the first call.
Contact&Connect was featured in Wiltshire’s CQC Inspection report – in the “Learning from feedback section” (p82):
“People and partners’ feedback was sourced through co-production and data collection. The local authority also had a ‘contact and connect’ service, an automated call service to gather peoples’ feedback following each interaction with the local authority. They sought views around experiences of adult social care, understanding the market, quality of services, contract management and safeguarding enquiries. We found peoples’ feedback was an integral part of the design, delivery and evaluation of strategy, services and Practice improvement.”
Wiltshire are now considering how the data could support a proportionate review approach (following the success in Sunderland City Council), they are also in the process of working on a script to support Unpaid Carers.
