Housing for Varying Needs Review - Aberdeen City Council

Housing for Varying Needs ReviewAberdeen City Council currently provides sheltered housing to approximately2300 residents in Aberdeen City. The sheltered housing service aims toprovide older people with a high quality of accommodation and supportservices, to meet a wide range of needs, thus enabling residents to liveindependently, safely and in comfort.In May 2010, Aberdeen City Council carried out a customer survey with shelteredhousing residents. The survey was designed primarily to gauge current levels ofsatisfaction with sheltered housing facilities and the services they receive but alsoasked residents their views about the charging system, complaints handling and theirreasons for living in sheltered housing. Surveys were completed anonymously asthe service was keen for residents to respond honestly and openly. To ensureservice improvements could be directed quickly to those complexes where they weremost needed and to identify areas of good practice from which we could learn for thewhole population of sheltered housing residents, we asked respondents to tell uswhich sheltered housing facility they lived in.The information provided will be used as part of the Housing for Varying NeedsReview and to inform future policy on the development of high qualityaccommodation, care and housing support services that meet the needs andexpectations of residents as efficiently and effectively as possible. We wanted tounderstand what we are doing right, and what we need to improve.Methodology and data limitationsThe survey questionnaire was designed to provide Aberdeen City Council withsome general information about the experience of residents receiving theseservices. It was not designed as an in-depth or ‘group specific’ exercise, butinstead to provide some baseline satisfaction data that can be used to monitorand track satisfaction levels as services develop.At the end of April and the beginning of May 2010, questionnaires weredistributed to 2147 sheltered housing residents through the managers andteam leaders of their support service. Residents were invited to a pre-surveymeeting, held in their sheltered housing complexes, where the aims of thesurvey were explained and sources of support for completion of thequestionnaire were provided. It is important to note that Senior PersonalCarers were not involved in the meetings, completion of the questionnaires oranalysis of the results. We received a total return of 1492 surveys. Thisequates to 69.5% of the questionnaires distributed.The questionnaire was intended to be ‘live’ for 3 weeks but this was extendedby a further 2 weeks to ensure residents who were absent had the chance torespond. As well as the questionnaire, a cover letter and pre-paid envelopewere also included.72