Quarterly report July-September

Jane Peabody, SNG Resident: For me, the most important thing I'm going to use is adding an attachment to an e-mail or a photograph, which I didn't know how to do before. And that’s absolutely brilliant.

Today we opened up the NHS app, which was very interesting, and something I will use. Definitely made a difference. Definitely learned a lot.

I didn't think I would because we've been using, you know, laptops and iPads for a long time, but I have. It’s been good.

Shiela Evans, SNG Resident: Getting into the National Health, you know, website would be absolutely ideal because you have to do your prescriptions, which at the moment I'm just phoning up, which I'll be able to do, you know, online.
 
They asked you to go online and I can't do it. But you know, we've been taught, you know, taught how to do it, so that'd be great.
 
So, I'm always asking my daughter to do things. I'm like, as I said, I'd like to learn how to do the shopping because I have to text my daughter my shopping list. She has to do it online, you know, and so that, you know, she'll be grateful for that as well. But yeah. Keep on doing it. You know, I now know how to get get into that one. I remembered that. As I said, it’s remembering with me. I don't remember things, but I did do that straight away today.

Rita Lewis, SNG Resident: I learned how to switch it on. I was, I was quite, quite good on it really. But it's opened up my eyes to more things that I wouldn't even think using it has.
 
Maybe not so afraid because I mean, if I make a mistake, I just switch off and start again. How to go on the NHS thing on my phone as well, sending pictures. Anyway, you know, just enjoy it. Then make a nice cup of tea.
 
They've been very, very helpful and very, very informative.
 
Sue Head, SNG Resident: It made me more aware of what you can do. I do use my computer a lot, so I do online banking and everything. So, but yeah, no, it has been good. And they've been very helpful when we get stuck. They were always sort of there behind you.
 
So yeah, so it's been, it has been good. It's been well worth coming.

The six weeks of ‘Tea & Technology’ training had big benefits for the well-being and independence of those who took part – as well as teaching valuable skills (such as how to access the NHS app to book doctor appointments) and helping to foster a sense of community. 

Our Financial and Digital Inclusion team will continue offering these sessions at some of our HOP schemes, but customers of any age can also get in touch for more information on the support we offer around digital inclusion.

One resident from Trafalgar Court shared that it had "opened up another world" for them. Another customer said, “I personally regained confidence that I had lost and learned to do things I'd not known about or hadn't tried before. Thanks, guys, for all your support!”

Our first festival took place in Ryde on the Isle of Wight on Friday 16 August. After getting great positive feedback from young people, their families and local organisations, we’re pleased to report that the first festival was a success! 

The event featured lots of fun stalls and activities, including a cooking workshop, art therapy activities, facepainting, fun mini-games and more.

Emily Morris, a member of the SNG Youth Panel who co-led the Youth Empowerment stall, shared, “Proud to be part of the first Wellbeing and Youth Social Action Festival that happened in Ryde, Isle of Wight, which is excitingly the first of many. I met so many amazing young people and shared so much about the #iwill movement and the SNG Youth Panel.”

Find out about the second festival taking place on 30 October in Plymouth.

At the end of the summer holidays, the Specialist Housing and Employment & Skills teams held a Summer Fete at the Joshua Tree, our temporary accommodation scheme for homeless households in Basingstoke.

Residents of Joshua Tree and nearby move-on properties enjoyed a range of free activities, including a tombola, clown performance, coffee van, and children's games. It was also wonderful to see some former residents of the scheme (who’ve now moved into independent housing) return to take part, including running stalls and sharing their success stories of living more independently.

Residents of the Notre Dame House Housing for Older People scheme in Plymouth enjoyed a fantastic day learning affordable ways to elevate their cooking.

Feedback was incredibly positive:

• 8 out of 9 participants agreed or strongly agreed that it helped combat loneliness
• 7 out of 9 said it improved their sense of community
• 8 out of 9 reported a positive impact on their mental health

One attendee, who rarely cooks, even asked the Chef for a written recipe so she could try it at home! Many others also said the event has inspired them to cook more and explore new recipes online.

The Thriving Communities fund panel recently met to review applications for our first round of funding, which offers grants of up to £5,000 for projects that support SNG customers and communities. 

Congratulations to our winning organisations: Basingstoke Mencap , Home Start Basingstoke & Deane (Surrey, Hampshire & Isle of Wight), YMCA Bournemouth , Impact Boscombe Youth Club  (Dorset & BCP), Design Nature CIC, Education Business Partnership (Wiltshire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire), Project Food (Devon, Somerset, Bristol & Gloucester), Youth Engagement Solutions , The Switch , St. Andrew’s Youth Club , Little Village , Elder’s Voice, and Art4Space CIC  (London).

Notre Dame House is a Housing for Older People scheme where residents didn’t speak much to one another and there weren’t any community activities. As a result, we commissioned two of our partners to run activities with residents to help bring the community together: Plymouth Environmental Action (PEA) to run planting and environmental workshops, and Fair Table CIC to run a pilot cookery workshop. 

Planting and Environmental Workshops with PEA:

• Raised £442,702 in social impact
• 32 residents benefited
• 5 reported an improvement in confidence
• 5 saw an improvement in their diet
• 10 found relief from their depression/anxiety

One resident, who helped pioneer this planting workshop alongside PEA, said:
“We are so happy with the way the garden has evolved over time and has been beneficial to those who visit in the early hours of the morning. They watch the sunrise and have found that the peace and quiet of their visits has really helped their mental health.”

The planting results from these workshops led to Diane Hurn at Notre Dame winning 1st place in our In Bloom Thriving Community Garden Award.

Judges’ comments: “This is a fantastic green space from an SNG housing for older people scheme. The panel were very impressed with the efforts from Diane and her husband in making this Community Garden space a wonderful place for the residents to come together, connect with nature and socialise.”

Close the Loop is a new long-term programme where we call to check in with customers after they’ve received certain services. This lets us resolve any remaining issue before they need to escalate it – and the information we’re collecting will also show us where we need to improve aspects of our work to benefit other customers too. 

• 65% of customers raised an issue that needed resolving, the rest of the feedback was compliments or simple requests. 
• 190 issues have been successfully resolved following a Close the Loop call.
• 132 complaints have so far been prevented. 

Encouragingly, we’ve also received feedback where customers have seen the link between their feedback and the action we’ve taken:

“I believe from a response to a survey; I have seen today someone putting weed killer down along the footpaths and driveways. It is nice to see you have taken on board what the residents say and improving the area where we live. Thank you.”

Between July and September 2024, we saw some great results:

• Debt advice
• Helped customers to save nearly £960k over the three-month period
• 955 customers supported around fuel poverty 
• The service also generated £75.4m in social value during quarter 2
• Financial inclusion
• Supported 3,064 cases with financial inclusion (such as through fuel/heating vouchers, food pantry packs, the welfare fund or white goods)
• Employment and skills
• 161 people helped into work or better work
• 1,223 training courses or other outcomes achieved
• 45 people supported with business start-ups and self-employment
• 410 customers worked with us around employment support
• Community investment
• 253 community organisations supported
• 439 customers supported through digital inclusion activities
• 287 young people took part in youth social action through our SNG #iwill programme
• Funding
• Secured over £1.08m  of external funding to enable our services and support to help even more customers.

• Satisfaction also improved slightly with regard to our performance on complaints (31% for the year to date but 34% in September). 
• We’ve continued to recruit more staff to improve the service and respond to more complaints in our target timescales (84% at stage 1 and 63% at stage 2). 
• We know we still have more to do and recently published a specific annual report on complaints, including what we’re doing to improve. 
• We also updated our complaints and compensation policies so they apply across all SNG homes.

• In quarter 2, our satisfaction score for repairs was 79% and our ‘close the loop’ work is also helping to flag any issues quickly so that they can be resolved. 
• We also have specific action plans in some localities (such as doing less planned work for a while so we can carry out more urgent repairs if sickness means we’re low on people in certain key trades).
• Satisfaction around how easy it was to get a repair carried out was 7.2 out of 10 (where 1 is not at all easy and 10 is very easy).
• A new process is also making it easier for our Contact Centre team to rebook repairs appointments if customers need to rearrange these.

“Keith came to assess my skirting board that had blown from a leak. I mentioned I also had a broken window handle which he replaced there and then, saving time, money for the company, and any inconvenience to myself. It's workers like Keith who go the extra mile that make such a difference. Thank you, Keith!”

Here are some other key performance figures for the year to September:

• How much customers trust SNG - 64.9% satisfaction 
• How satisfied or dissatisfied customers are that SNG listens to their views and acts on them - 53.7% satisfaction 
• How satisfied or dissatisfied customers are that SNG keeps them informed about things that matter to them – 72.6% satisfaction 
• The perception of how we manage ASB for the year - from our surveys with a random sample of customers – was at 58% for the year to date.
• How satisfied or dissatisfied customers are with the way their recent anti-social behaviour case was handled - 70% for the year to date but 93% satisfaction in September