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

Objectives

This project was part of a pilot peer review programme which involved customers and carers in reviews of services in adult social care. These reviews complement mandatory service reviews.  The Contract Monitoring Team at Warwickshire County Council carry out both proactive and risk focused quality assurance monitoring visits to providers of adult social care, to ensure they are meeting their contractual requirements and that customers are receiving a high quality service. The visits carried out by the Peer Reviewers have complemented and supported these reviews ensuring that standards are continuously improving.

The objectives of the Peer Reviews are:

• Capture previously unrecorded information about the customer’s experiences of quality in Providers services.

• Support customers and carers to utilise their lived experiences of receiving services (experts by experience) to input into quality monitoring processes and service provision/development.

• Provides an extra dimension to the reviewing process that ensures the customer voice is heard and recognised.

• Recognises the value of people who have/are using services as ‘experts’.

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