During the period 1
st July until the 5
th October 2009, Homeless Services Section carried out a consultation exercise with people who had presented themselves to the department as homeless.
Homeless Services are keen to ensure that they provide services which meet the needs and expectations of their customers. A key aim of the section is to ensure that service users are involved in the development of the policies and the services which they provide.
The section has a varied programme of consultation including holding focus groups with a wide range of user groups such as:
During focus groups the clients were asked about their experience of being homeless and were asked what they expected from the Homeless Service. Many of the focus groups were made up of clients in chaotic circumstances and from these groups several common themes occurred. The Themes emerging from the focus groups included:
Given the composition of the focus groups, it was felt that further investigation was required in order to determine if the same themes also applied to applicants with less chaotic lifestyles.
Following on from the focus groups, staff within the homeless team were asked what kind of event they thought would encourage maximum participation with the client group that they worked with daily. From these discussions it was decided that, in order to avoid consultation fatigue by issuing another self completion questionnaire, a telephone survey would be appropriate and the information gathered from the focus groups would be used to create the telephone questionnaire.
This is the first time a telephone survey has been carried out within Homeless Services.
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