“I can see what you can’t see” – How Warwickshire County Council involves people with learning disabilities as peer reviewers

Outcomes

This project has built a strong case for WCC to continue to develop the programme further. Indeed the Customer Engagement Team are exploring the possibility of broadening the scope of the programme to include domiciliary care health services and acute care in hospitals in the future.

Once the Reviews were completed and reports finalised, a Reviewer de-brief meeting was held to allow for the sharing of experiences and make recommendations.  The Reviewers were unanimous in expressing that they had enjoyed the process and talking to people to find out how they were supported.  The Reviewers had expressed that they had found it a steep learning curve taking in the whole environment surrounding services, but that their confidence had increased throughout the process.  The Reviewers were clear that it had been a worthwhile experience and that they were committed to undertaking future visits. 

Immediately after the reviews a short questionnaire was sent to all six Providers who took part in the pilots. They were asked to comment on pre-review preparation, what went well and not so well on the review day and finally make suggestions for any changes to help in the programme development. The responses were positive about the pre-review preparation, although it was suggested that supplementary information about the process would have also been helpful. Looking at how the Peer Review programme can be developed it was suggested by a Provider that a printed leaflet, in easy-read format would allow staff to talk to people they support about the process and how to become Peer Reviewers themselves, which WCC has now produced.

In the video below, Liam, a Peer Reviewer, discusses his experience with the programme.

Rachel Flowers wrote this case study for Governance International on 13 March 2013.