New Mills Estate Community Project
Sheltered Housing Service
You told us…
We asked you…
ASB has become an issue on the New Mills estate. We need to do something to break down barriers between communities in the area and our partner organisations.
What are the barriers to sheltered housing for BME communities?
Some of the things you told us were… There is a lack of awareness and misconception of sheltered housing and a fear that this housing doesn’t does not cater to BME needs.
What we did with this feedback… YHN’s Customer Involvement Team and Tenancy Estate Team joined forces with ‘Play In Newcastle’, Northumbria Police and the Street Wardens to help reduce ASB. We arranged some diversionary activities for young people which also helped to address reasons why people were engaged in this behaviour. During the summer we held a football tournament which saw YHN take on the lads from Murray House, Northumbria Police and the Fire service which saw the Police bringing home the trophy! We are hoping to hold another tournament in the Oct half term.
What we did with this feedback… We arranged tours of our sheltered accommodation for members of ACANE and South Mountain Chinese group and in May we held a sheltered housing information event at The Beacon for BME communities to raise awareness. As a result there were 5 applications made for sheltered accommodation from this event.
Local Offers Consultation We asked you… Each year a number of the strategic targets are set based on customer priorities. This gives a broader understanding of the issues that affect tenants and where you want to see service improvement.
You told us… For 2016/17 YHN needs to prioritise collecting rental income, managing empty properties, repairs satisfaction and how long it takes to complete a repair, having decent neighbourhoods, listening to customers views and understanding satisfaction levels; and how support makes a difference to older people living in our communities.
What we did with this feedback…
Talking to Young People We asked you… In August we talked to 60 young people at a community event in Walker about how we can engage with young people.
We have developed 8 local offers to address customer’s priorities. Over 245 customers were involved in deciding the local offers and from this 140 customers will be involved in monitoring how we perform against them.
What have the Readers Panel been up to?
In November they looked at our new Ostara leaflet. They told us we needed to change a few things for its launch in the New Year to make it more customer friendly and effective.
You told us… How we can reach more young people via social media, how we can more easily capture their views through online engagement and that we need to engage with them to be easy and accessible.
What we did with this feedback… We invited all the young people at the event to join our Facebook community group YHN Chit-Chat. We asked all the young people at the event to follow @NewsfromYHN on Twitter and follow us on Facebook.
What changes did we make with this feedback… The text used in the leaflet was changed to purple on a background which improved the contrast and ability for customer to read it. Unhelpful jargon was removed such as the word ‘telecare’. Genuine customer photos were included rather than stock images we had on file. Pictures of staff roles/ staff members were included to relate more to the customers as their first point of contact and better promote the service.