Worcestershire Active Voices (WAVES)

Worcestershire Active Voices or WAVES are a panel of service users who help run the Supporting People program in Worcestershire. WAVES was set up to make sure that service users have a say in the  main areas of Supporting People.

About WAVES

WAVES was set up to make sure that service users have a say in the four main areas of Supporting People:

1. Buying new services
2. Reviewing current services
3. Developing services
4. Running of Supporting People

It's very important to have service user involvement in all of these areas so Supporting People can make sure that their services are what services want and need. Anyone in a Supporting People service can get involved in any of these four areas.

The WAVES group has written the Supporting People User Involvement strategy and this tells how you can get involved and what the goals are for involvement over the coming year.

Getting Involved

There are many ways that you can get involved in the Supporting People program and these fall under four main types

1. Individual – having a say in your support by telling your support provider what your needs are and putting together a support plan to work towards goals you choose. Every service user should be involved in their support planning.
   
2. Service – you can do this by getting involved with any groups that your provider has such as residents' committees or service user groups. You can also be involved in Supporting People reviews, this is when Supporting People comes and checks out the quality of its services. You will be asked if you want to talk to the Supporting People team or complete and questionnaires so you can tell them about the service you get. Finally, you can become a service user reviewer, this is someone who is either using a service now or who has used one and now assists on service reviews. They go out and talk to other service users about the support they get and then help to write the report on that service. If you would like more information on becoming a service user reviewer you can email the team.
   
3. Running the program – The WAVES group are involved with the running of the Supporting People and have a seat on the group that runs Supporting People called the Commissioning Body. This group make all the major decisions about Supporting People and the WAVES members ensure that service users are considered in all these decisions.
   
4. Access and information – you can help us make sure that we are giving you as much information as possible by contacting the WAVES group and suggesting places where it would be useful to have information about Supporting People. You can also be part of the team who write the Supporting People newsletter. For more information on getting involved in the newsletter please email WAVES.
   

How to get a service

There are a number of ways that you can access our services:

1. Through the Access Centre –
   Call 0845 607 2000,  visit our service centres
   or email socialcare@worcestershire.gov.uk
   
2. Through your local hub centres

This page was last reviewed 22 May 2013 at 12:31.
The page is next due for review 18 November 2014.