> Service User Involvement

At Integrate, we think it’s very important that Service Users are helped to have a say in how our charity is run and to help shape and improve the services that we offer. It’s for this reason that we work hard to support service user involvement in a number of different ways.

The Tenants Group

The group is made up of volunteers, students and tenants with staff support for some individual members. They meet monthly to talk about problems that tenants might be having, to do with their home, perhaps maintenance jobs and other housing related areas. It gives Integrate staff a chance to find out about problems and help the service users to sort them out. Sometimes it leads to ways that the service offered by Integrate can be made better.

At the time of writing about a dozen (12) service users reps tend to attend and run the meeting.
If you are a service user and would like to take part in these meetings, or would like a problem raised there for you, speak with your key-worker to find out about doing so.
     

The Sub-Board Quality Group

Also monthly, Trustees, Senior Managers and Service Users meet to talk about the quality of service provision in all of the areas that we support people and to discuss how Integrate services can be made better. Service user delegates from the Tenants Group attend these meetings to make sure that service user views are represented. This is a Sub-Board Meeting which forms part of the overall governance of the Charity, and involving tenants in this group means that we are making progress towards having service user input at all levels of management decision making within the Charity.

Recruitment

Some service users have been trained to help take part in recruitment. This means that when Integrate are taking on new staff, they have to be interviewed and asked questions to decide which people can come to work with us. Service users who have been trained can be part of the interviews, to help talk to the candidates and make the decisions about which ones we can give jobs to.

Chris, who has been interviewing with Integrate managers for Project Support Staff said, “It’s good to be involved in getting the staff that you want… I think more tenants should get involved in interviewing, for me, it means I can get the right people to support and help me”