Encouraging feedback on the transfer

Encouraging feedback from the people we support and their families

Ongoing reflection and review happens every day at Aruma (formerly House with No Steps). Our staff are encouraged to think of new ways of doing things that positively impact the lives of people we support.

People with disability and families are included in the way we run our services, and feedback is always encouraged to ensure individual needs are met.

How we collect and action feedback

We collect feedback in a number of ways. This helps us to better understand how we can improve our services. These include:

• Independent surveys and interviews with people we support and families (both current and prospective). These are run through independent research agencies.
• Ongoing weekly and/or daily conversations with people we support and families. These more casual conversations help us to check in on goals and outcomes, adjust services if needed, ensure high service quality, share information, and highlight any risk or issues.
• Regular face-to-face interviews with people we support and families. These interviews track our performance against key life domains that are important to people.
• ‘About Me’ Pre-Planning booklet. This tool was developed to make sure we have detailed conversations with the people we support and families about goals and outcomes, what’s working, what isn’t, and what’s important to them for the future.
• Website complaint or feedback form.

We have a comprehensive Complaints and Feedback (QMS-Easy English) to ensure that issues which are raised are actioned quickly.

Getting feedback from staff

Communication is most effective when its going two ways. Its important for us to hear back from staff on a regular basis , both formally and informally, about how things are going, what’s working well and what needs improvement.

At Aruma, the practice of listening to staff is embedded in our culture and is always part of our strategic priorities. We conduct regular staff surveys using an independent agency, The Voice Project, to track engagement and progress, this feedback is used to identify strengths and areas to focus more attention on. Action plans are formulated on a company wide and regional basis and improvements are monitored on an ongoing basis.

Transferring staff will participate in these regular surveys as soon as they join Aruma which will be separate from the reporting mechanisms under the performance and monitoring regime to ensure that they have settled in well and have confidence in house with No Steps as their employer.

Keeping people safe

To make sure all the people we support and staff are treated respectfully, we have robust systems and processes in place which includes information about rights and safety.

In addition to the standard methods for raising a complaint or concern, we have an independent whistleblowing service – Your Call. This service provides an independent, third party contact for reporting complaints and giving feedback.

This is available to people we support, families and staff. They can be contacted 24 hours, seven days a week (except for national public holidays) on the phone or through their website.