The Quality Checkers - why User Experience?

The Quality

Checkers

The

Quality Checkers service was developed by Skills for People and delivers checks and training throughout the country. Quality Checkers audits focus on supported living services for adults with learning disabilities to make their own choices and enjoy largely independent lives and the support they receive in their own homes, day services, health services, housing and where people have moved from campus provision. 

The Quality Checkers service uses experts by experience as paid auditors, to give a view that is often missing from most quality reviews.  Their work helps to make sure services truly support people with learning disabilities to live full and healthy lives.  They speak to the people who receive services, support staff, and families, and work with the local authority adult services and adult mental health to explain what is happening and what could be improved.  They use the 11 REACH standards, and they have developed and use standard ways to interview and report their findings, which give consistent results and mean the reports can be used as a basis for negotiation.

When they audit, it makes a difference

Many adults with learning disabilities feel vulnerable and frightened.  They don’t want to complain, in case the staff punish them.  In some cases, they don’t think anyone is listening.  So when “someone like them”, an expert by experience, helps them to say what they really feel, it makes them start to feel in control.

Feeling In Control

The audits put them in control.  People who are in control start asking for things to be the way they would like.  But this is a good thing.  Instead of getting frustrated, and shouting or throwing things, instead of getting violent and challenging, people started askingfor change.  The cost to the local authority to pay for support depends on how challenging people’s behaviour is, so as the frustrated and challenging behaviours reduce, so do the costs.  It makes a very big difference – average support costs (2-7hrs per week) are around £4,166 per year, whereas extra support for frustrated behaviour can push this up to £15,479 and when someone gets violent they often need 24 hour care which raises the cost (on average to £133,333 per year).  We calculated that for every £1,000 spent on audits and training, the local authority saves around £5,781.

The report makes a difference

The Quality Checkers service helped to develop the REACH standards issued by Paragon, and developed the structure of the interviews and reports.  This means that there’s a national standard for User Experience, and a nationally agreed way of measuring it.

Without national standards, each local authority (commissioner) develops their own standards about user experience, and each service provider develops their own standards, which means they get into arguments over which is the better standard and how it should be measured.  How can anyone decide that the user experience is “up to standard”?

The Quality Checkers  don’t just write what people say, they put it into context with the other things they noticed, like Staff Rooms in people’s houses, which shouldn’t be there! Experts by experience come to local authority and provider workshops to help design better services. Support organisations can now make the changes that people want, instead of trying to guess and make expensive mistakes. 

We measured these benefits by looking at how many times social services had to move a contract, both before the Quality Checker audits and afterwards.  It showed that for every £1,000 spent on audits and training, they saved £1,484.

It makes staff happy too

Support staff and volunteers said they felt more engaged, more respectful of the people they support.  They tried harder to be flexible, and at the same time the people who got support felt more confident, so they could be more flexible too.  Staff would support someone to go out in the evening and have an afternoon off in lieu, rather than working to strict hours and demanding overtime.

Because of the friendships that develop, staff sickness and absence reduced, and so did staff turnover.  This makes a big difference to the cost, ‘though this time it is the cost to the service provider organisation.  Taking these two together, for every £1,000 invested in audits and training, we calculated that service provider organisations saved £1,171.

What does this mean?

It means that when you invest money in getting Quality Checker audits, you get your money back and much more.  The Quality Checkers’ service is Value for Money. For every £1000 invested in audits and training (including the money needed for support and allowances for individuals), the local organisations benefit to the tune of £11,410.  Looking at different scenarios, this SROI ratio ranges from £11,250 to £18,190.

There are lots of benefits from the Quality Checker audits, listed in the full SROI report: some describe how people feel when they get audited or get trained to become a Quality Checker; some describe how the Quality Checkers and Skills for People help other organisations, or inspire other self-advocacy organisations to create new things such as Easy Access Tenancy Agreements; some describe how the Quality Checker audits mean the Department of Health and Care Quality Commission can use the reports instead of having to go to the organisations themselves.

Do you need a report to help you raise funding?  Or are you a funding organisation who needs to verify what you are getting for your money?  You know where to find us!