We have moved....

We are now writing our blog posts over on our Involvement Pages

 Come and see what we have been up to as well 

as other volunteers and clients of Southdown Housing Association

 http://southdowninvolvement.wordpress.com/

The Q-Team have been very busy lately! We now have two teams of volunteer quality checkers, a residential Q-Team and the Day Services Q-Team, with 13 QCs altogether! The residential team have started their work with East Sussex Health Watch, checking the quality of 6 services. We are really enjoying our work with Health Watch, getting to go out to meet and speak to other service users and see some more external services. At our last meeting some of the new recruits learnt how to record the video reports and we also went through making an Easy Read report. The Day Services team have stated their three year project to create a tool kit that will be used to check the quality of 5 Day Services in East Sussex. we have been out to hold focus groups at different locations and are excited about getting stuck into this East Sussex funded project. Keep an eye on our blog as we will be introducing some of out new Q-Team members!

Hi, my name is Steve Salt. I started on The Q-Team on 6th September 2010. I have been on lots of visits with The Q-Team and found some interesting things about different services. I can't always go to visits as not all services are as accessible as others. I also do volunteering work at Newhaven Fort and at Peacehaven horticultural society. I have also recently joined a local history group called Peacehaven pioneers. I like watching TV, especially wrestling. I enjoy listening to music and I love Status Quo. I like being on the team as I enjoy the camaraderie and I like helping people.

'Ensuring Quality Services' Core Principles Commissioning Tool?

The Q-Team have been asked to work in partnership with Healthwatch East Sussex to review services across East Sussex and how they meet the needs of the clients that live there. It will be great to work in partnership with such a customer focussed organisation.

So much has been happening with The Q-Team recently. We had our second open day for people interested in joining the team with a further 6 new recruits, our first round of new recruits have just graduated from their training and are now fully fledged quality checkers and the second wave of new recruits have started their training. It is amazing to see how the team has grown and developed and great to see the old hands at The Q-Team delivering really polished training to the new recruits. I am so proud of this project and how it has grown and developed.

We had a second open day for The Q-Team on 28th January and had a fantastic turn out of people interested in joining the team. One of our newer (almost graduated) recruits co-presented this time, with some of the more seasoned Q-Team members, and did a really friendly and professional job. The team has grown hugely and continues to grow with people from Southdown Housing Association and from other organisations making up the crew. We are really excited that this will make for an ever more eclectic team that will be able to more meaningfully engage with

more and more of the people that we speak to. If you want to talk to us to find out how we help people to assess their services as well as recruiting, setting up and running a team of quality checkers, just come along to one of our courses. The next dates are 19th February and 17th March.