Community Reporter getting down to business at Resident Engagement Focus Group
Posted on February 10, 2014 by lazerkember
Blog article by Resident Community Reporter Tracey Kember
Orbit South’s Resident Engagement Focus Group meets at a London Bridge cafe about 6 times a year, and I got to meet and interview them on a cold January morning!
They used to meet at a London hotel but agreed to keep costs down and make a change, so they switched locations so they could save a third of the costs. The group’s members come from all over the areas of Orbit South
Here’s a flavour of what they discussed at their meeting:-
They talked about the Digital Inclusion Strategy for Orbit residents. As times are changing with the digital age and many services are being done on line these days, Orbit want to help as many residents as possible to get on line. One of the pilot scheme is to have Wi-Fi in sheltered schemes.
Lisa Cornish went on to explain that Orbit Heart of England, Orbit East and Orbit South are now part of Orbit Living. The hope is residents will all receive the same level of services, it will be a consistant approach but a local feel to it. There will be a lots of changes but hopefully residents will just see a more stream lined service with a lot coming up in the future and things much better for residents.
Orbit East and South are doing a review of the Resident Engagement Service looking at what is working, what’s not, what barriers are there to residents getting involved. They have till the end of April to submit the review to Phil Tudor (Head of Service Improvement for Orbit Living). This group are getting involved in the review and are holding a special meeting in February to discuss things further.
The Residents Conference in November 2013 at the Black Prince, Bexley was a huge sucess with 100% positive feedback from both residents and staff. There was a great vibe with people coming out from their workshops with big smiles. People from all over Orbit South got to know each other which everyone said was a great thing. Some had never used a computer before and thoroughly enjoyed their workshop.
Two leaflets for the Property Services Team were then discussed. The group said they were quite straight forward and pretty spot on, they were clear and well laid out. These comments will be fed back to the Property Services Team and the leaflets can then have the ‘Customer Approved’ logo stamped on them. The group are often asked to look at leaflets that will be available to residents to make sure they are clear and easy to understand.
The purpose of the Resident Engagement Group is to improve communication with residents, develop further ways for residents to become involved, encourage participation and encourage working relationships with Orbit and residents. There are 5 members currently who work well as a team. They would ideally like to have a couple more members and would really like a younger member to join them too. The group recently got stuck in with the tree management policy and the digital inclusion strategy input, and value for money is a key priority for them.
They would like a blog page for a wider captive customer audience and to liaise with other services in the forthcoming year.
The group likes being active but they would like to be even more active! They would like more research for every project they are presented with. They feel the group is really beneficial and they have achieved alot. There has been no conflicts within the group. Their main aim for 2014 is to work with a Community Reporter to create a blog page, that may well be me!!
No one leads the team, it is always joint input by the entire group and mentored by Lisa Cornish and the team talk about anything that is presented to them around the time that needs input.
If you’d like to learn more about the Group dont hesitate to get in touchhttp://osinvolvedresidents.org/contact/
Many thanks to the group for the interview and I wish them every success for the future and keep up all your hard work……..
Tracey Kember