Are Council Services Accessible to people with long-term conditions and their carers?

Project Update July 2023

Background to the investigation

In June 2022, the Council's Scrutiny Committee launched an investigation to find out how accessible council services are to people with disabilities, long term conditions and carers. We contacted health groups, disability support groups, carer's support groups and other health services (including GPs and pharmacies) right across Hartlepool to invite them to contribute to the investigation and to promote it to their members and clients.

There were lots of different ways that people could give us their views about how easy it is to use our services. We ran a survey through this page for organisations and individuals to have their say. We also ran a series of focus group workshops with individual organisations so that we could discuss issues with their clients and staff in detail. There was also an open session for members of the public so those people who are not involved with a support organisation could also tell us about their experience. To make the survey more accessible we produced large-print and easy-read paper versions, whilst the online version is compliant with screen readers. Assistance with completing the survey was also provided in the Community Hubs.

As well as asking for your views, we also took a good look at ourselves. We carried out an internal review of our public facing services to find out what they thought they were doing well to make their services more accessible, where they felt improvements could be made and what they would need to make these improvements.

We also did a "mystery shopper" exercise to look at some of our services in more detail. Volunteers from Hartlepool Health Watch and Hartlepool Deaf Centre visited or contacted certain services to do tasks including:

• Making an enquiry or finding out information
• Requesting and undergoing an assessment
• Making a booking
• Making an application or renewal of documentation
• Visiting a site, reception or location

We then carried out in-depth interviews with our mystery shopper volunteers to discuss their experience. We wanted to find out how easy they found the process right the way through from finding out the contact details for the service, through to making contact and attending an appointment.

This research phase took from the launch in June 2022 until December 2022. Since that time we have been working hard to develop a set of recommendations based on the findings of the investigation.

What did we find out?

You can read the full findings report which was submitted to the Audit and Governance Committee by clicking this link.

What are we recommending that we do to find a solution to the issues uncovered during the investigation?

During the investigation we came to a number of conclusions about how easy it is to access our services which you can read in the investigation findings report. Based on these conclusions we have drafted 9 recommendations of solutions we can try. These are:

Recommendation 1: Raise awareness of the facilities available for disabled customers and improve information

Recommendation 2: Reintroduce the text relay service and improve access for customers who are Deaf, have hearing loss or other communication / speech difficulties

Recommendation 3: Provide access to a video / telephone translation service (for BSL and other languages)

Recommendation 4: Improve staff training on disability and accessibility issues

Recommendation 5: Use the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Officer Group to identify improvements to services

Recommendation 6: Improve the Hartlepool.gov.uk website to make it more accessible and easier to use

Recommendation 7: Ensure that Council reports, documents and forms are accessible and easy to read / use

Recommendation 8: Do a consultation to find out if the creation of a passport / card / lanyard system could be useful for customers to show to staff so that their needs are quickly recognised and responded to any additional support needs.

Recommendation 9: Share the lessons learned from the development of the Highlight leisure centre across all services

What happens next?

Now we would like your views on these recommendations. There are a few different ways you can tell us what you think:

• Complete this short survey to give us your views online
• Download and print an easy-read version of the recommendations and survey
• Send us a letter with your views. Letters should be addressed to Accessibility Investigation, FAO Joan Stevens, Hartlepool Borough Council, Civic Centre, Victoria Road, Hartlepool, TS24 8AY
• Ask your local support group to formally respond to us on your behalf using either of these two methods

The closing date for comments on the recommendations is Sunday 27th August.