We believe that the views and ideas of our customers should be integral to the way we work. Their involvement in all aspects of the organisation, from the day to day running of services, to the decisions taken at a strategic level, ensures we provide quality services which are accountable and responsive to our customers needs.
Since September 2008 we have had a full time Customer Involvement Manager appointed to work with customers and staff to develop involvement across the organisation. The ‘Y involve me’ strategy outlines our aspirations for customer involvement and innovative ways of achieving them. The strategy is the key to developing quality customer involvement across the organisation and focuses on 5 key areas:
- Communication
- Support
- Representation
- Change
- Improvement
Our top 3 successes so far!
Representing South London YMCA
Our customers are representing us on regional and national forums. We have also appointed our first customer Board Member, and 3 customer representatives on the Services and Performance Committee - a fantastic achievement which will have a really positive impact on our organisation!
Raising our profile in the local community
As part of a group of local housing associations we put on a high profile ‘anti gun and knife crime’ event in Croydon in August 2009. We were proud to become one of the pilot sites working with Alcohol Concern and SMART Recovery UK to train our customers to become SMART facilitators. Our Customers are now running weekly SMART meetings – open to the wider local community - and drawing on their experiences of recovery to support other people battling addiction.
Customer Employment
We are also providing more opportunities for customers to access employment. As well as pre-employment work done with our customers in the course of key work, we have taken customers on as trainees. In December 2009, South London YMCA along with colleagues at Thames Reach set up an exciting new London Customer Employment Partnership, which is now providing real employment opportunities for homeless people.
There are eleven agencies in the scheme: Broadway, Centrepoint, Connection at St-Martins, Look Ahead, The Passage, Providence Row, South London YMCA, Thames Reach, Crisis, Metropolitan Support Trust and Homeless Link. The aim of the partnership is to increase opportunities of paid employment, work experience and volunteering within the eleven organisations for current and former service users of these agencies. Members of the Partnership have committed to working to remove organisational barriers to customer employment and striving to effect culture change within the organisation so that customer employment is embraced by current staff.
We advertise our own customer employment opportunities throughout the partnership and we now employ former SLYMCA customers across the organisation and several customers in voluntary roles.
Our ultimate goal is to encourage more customers to get involved in shaping the services we provide. Our staff work closely with customers to make them aware of the opportunities for getting involved and of the real benefits that come from greater involvement.
