Consumer Engagement

Consumer engagement plays an integral role in the design, development and delivery of our care and services.

Who are consumers?

We define consumers as the people who are using or thinking about using Helping Hand’s services, and carers are the family, friends and others who care about, look after or in other ways support people who use Helping Hand’s services.

What is consumer engagement?

Consumer engagement is an active process of participation and partnership. It refers to the wide range of strategies in which consumers are involved in the planning, service delivery and evaluation of their care and the services provided by Helping Hand.

Why do we do it?

Consumer engagement leads to better outcomes. It ensures we listen to a range of voices and respond to help meet our Mission: We create communities and experiences to enable older people to live their best lives. It improves decision making, increases community satisfaction with services, is part of balanced decision-making, and brings into focus issues relevant to consumers that might not otherwise be heard.

How do we do consumer engagement?

Our organisation will be open to facilitating consumer engagement at every possible interaction, truly listening and responding, and holding ourselves accountable for partnering with consumers in the delivery of safe quality care and supporting consumers to live their best lives. It takes many forms and can be delivered in a range of ways. We will choose the most appropriate form of engagement for each activity to ensure we are respecting the dignity of those involved, creating safe spaces and ways to engage, and to encourage the highest possible levels of engagement.

The Consumer Engagement team will:

• Help to create a culture where the entire workforce embraces consumer engagement as a fundamental, accessible and enjoyable part of their daily work
• Develop tools and processes that enable meaningful and accessible engagement
• Support managers and other staff to design and deliver engagement activities and provide support in responding to and actioning feedback given.
• Lead the delivery of consumer engagement programs such as Turn Up Your Voice.

We are guided by the Consumer Engagement Policy in the design and delivery of our work.

Turn Up Your Voice

Turn Up Your Voice is an innovative program unique to Helping Hand and is our flagship consumer engagement initiative. Turn Up Your Voice aligns with our leadership development program My Home Life, and uses a strengths-based appreciative enquiry approach. Involving residents, clients, staff, volunteers and family, the purpose of the program is to listen to what we do well, work collaboratively to do better more of the time, and co-design and embed outcomes to improve the care and quality of service provided.

 

Please click on the links to download information flyers for consumers and staff.

If you would like to find out more, please email us or call 1300 653 600.