Your views and feedback

Getting involved

We want to make sure that our current and former service users are at the heart of the Supporting People programme. We'd like service users to really get involved in helping to make Supporting People to be as good as it can possibly be. We have made a commitment to involving people in the Supporting People programme.

So far, people who use or have used Supporting People services have offered us all sorts of help and advice to make things better including, for example:

• improving our information leaflets,
• writing policies on reimbursing expenses to service users,
• designing the Support Services Directory, 
• helping us to decide what services we might need in the future.

We are also getting some help with a strategy to make sure we carry on involving service users in the future. As well as running specific consultation events, the programme is supported by a thriving service user panel.

Service User Panel

The Service User Panel is made up of people who are currently receiving support and who also attend of one of their own support provider involvement groups. Members of the Panel, attend meetings every 6 weeks for a maximum of 1 year. Each meeting has an agenda with a specific topic area and members get involved in a range of issues such as designing and amending policies; conference planning and recently the Panel compiled the Supporting People Service User Charter (PDF, 12.5k).

In December 2009, the panel hosted a Service User Day with the theme “Evolution – your journey.” You can find out more about this great event by watching this Kent TV programme:

Through their own experiences panel members are able to help identify ways that the Programme can be improved and give us a valuable insight into how effective the support they have received has been. By involving people from a range of support providers groups, we want to make sure that we can reach more service users and ensure that they have a way of feeding their views back through to the Panel.

If you attend a service provider involvement group and are interested in finding out more about the Panel, please email us.

Email: supportingpeopleteam@kent.gov.uk

Phone: 01622 696171

Write to: Supporting People
              Room 4.02
              Sessions House
              Maidstone
              Kent
              ME14 1XQ

If you have any general comments about the services we provide please email us with your feedback. Find out what to do if you would like to complain about Supporting People or one of the services you’re receiving through us.