The Under-represented voice and Care Opinion

We had the pleasure of hearing Grant Douglas, Independent Equality Consultant, speak at our inaugural Care Opinion event in Glasgow in November.  Grant has kindly allowed us to reproduce the key points of his talk.

Voicing your opinion is a right that most people take for granted. People are inundated with surveys, questionnaires, posting comments on social media and so on.  However, these methods are not always available in the health and social care sectors, and even if they are, they are, sadly, not accessible to everyone.

Over the past 4 or 5 years, I have worked as an Equality consultant with Capability Scotland, Talking Mats and the Stroke Association to work with people who have Communication Support Needs to look at how organisations can best interact with them.In 2011/12, I was involved in an Inclusive Feedback project which looked at barriers to providing feedback as well as ways to overcome them and here I would like to share with you some of the project’s findings.So what were the barriers?

• Personal inclination – “I can’t be bothered, it won’t make a difference anyway”
• Willingness to get feedback – “They’re not interested in my opinion”
• Knowledge of conditions and impairments – “What do they know what I have to cope with day in day out? They just get me up in the morning and come back at night”
• Attitudes – “I really don’t like the way they treat me, I might have a learning disability but I’m not a child”
• Repercussions – “If I moan they might treat me even worse”
• Culture – “They don’t want compliments, I had a great carer, but when I told the manager, they just ignored it”
• Accessibility – ‘I can’t write, so I can’t fill in the form”

This is where Care Opinion will make a difference, as it will enable everyone including those people who are under-represented to give feedback. Here’s some quotes that I can imagine people might say when they come across this service –

• ‘I can do that using my assistive software’
• ‘Oh, look that person has said that, well I can say this’
• ‘If you’re not happy, can I put something on Care Opinion for you’
• ‘If they got a response, I might get one too’

Top tips

• Embrace Care Opinion
• Take all comments seriously
• Respond individually to each comment
• Respond at the same level as the comment – no jargon
• Encourage participation