Northamptonshire County Council employs Total Voice Northamptonshire to provide independent quality checking services. Total Voice is an advocacy service and part of VoiceAbility, which champions the rights and strengthens the voice of people who face disadvantage or discrimination.

Total Voice recently carried out a review of The Mews, one of our homes providing residential care and rehabilitation for adults with acquired brain injuries. They visited The Mews to check the quality of service from a service user’s perspective, interviewing two residents and talking to members of staff as well as looking around the home. After their visit they provided a report of their findings.

Choices and control
An area of key importance to Total Voice is whether service users know how to complain about any aspect of the service and if they think that it will help. The service users interviewed said that they know how to complain and that complaints were listened to and acted upon.

Having a health action plan for each service user is also assessed by Total Voice who found that all residents at The Mews have health action plans and see all relevant health professionals.

The report also highlighted that all residents are free to make their own choices, for example, deciding on holidays, how their rooms are decorated, what they do and where they go. They are free to take informed risks and have keys to their rooms.

The brain injury rehabilitation service provided at The Mews, aims to increase the independence of all service users and these elements of decision making are an important part of this rehabilitation process.

Positive comments
Here are some of the comments the quality checkers made:
“The best one I have been to, it’s about people getting the best support, not about profit and people being greedy.”
“I find it heart-warming.”
“The staff were polite and approachable.”
“There is loads of space. There are places they [service users] can go if they want to chill out.”
“The garden was massive and very nice.”

We welcome independent assessments from all types of organisation, listening objectively to all feedback from third parties, service users, their families and our staff. We endeavour to continually improve the quality of life for people in our homes and the effectiveness of our rehabilitation services, wherever possible.