We are incredibly pleased that two of our projects from this last year have been highlighted as best practices by the Chartered Institute of Housing.

The two projects are very different…

The first is Cosy Place. The Cosy Place scheme was recognised as best practice in the category – Working in Partnership. Cosy Place was designed and developed to accommodate eight people who were experiencing homelessness. And to give them a place they could call home with the opportunity to rebuild their lives.

Cosy Place was an unloved block of flats in the middle of Brynmawr, and sadly, the building fell into disrepair. Working in partnership with Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council (BGCBC) and R&M Williams as a design and build contractor, the buildings were remodelled with funding from Welsh Government to create a Housing First Scheme. Tai Calon acting as the landlord and BGCBC providing support tailored to the needs of the individual.

Community involvement is also crucial in the scheme, with Support Workers and Tai Calon staff assisting in re-introducing individuals to activities they may have found challenging.

Rachel Rees, Head of Housing at Tai Calon said, “The scheme has simply changed lives! It’s given hope and a fresh start for people to be the best version of themselves. Ultimately the recovery-oriented approach is helping to end homelessness and provides stability and consistency, something they have never had.”

The second project highlighted this year is Rant & Rave in the ‘Excellence in Customer Service’ category.

When Tai Calon developed its new 2020-2025 corporate plan, we set out a clear organisational mission: by 2025, 90% of our customers will be either very satisfied or satisfied with the services they receive from Tai Calon. How we collected customer feedback wasn’t sufficient to help us achieve our mission.

Our traditional way of collecting feedback on day-to-day service delivery was mainly phone and paper-based. This was time-consuming and expensive and led to feedback not being collected for several weeks after customers received a service. We couldn’t quickly gather a sufficient volume of feedback to generate detailed insight, typically only collecting 100-200 items per month.

With this as our starting point, we knew we needed to find a solution that allowed us to gather and analyse higher volumes of feedback in a simple, flexible, and intuitive way and that’s when we decided to work with Rant & Rave.

We quickly knew our investment was worthwhile, receiving around 300 items of feedback a month at a response rate of over 20%. Within a few months, our response rates increased to over 25%, which meant collecting around 600-750 items of feedback every month.

We learnt quickly that our customers were overwhelmingly positive about our team. We received over 4,500 positive items of feedback, referring specifically to our team’s high level of professionalism, politeness, and helpfulness

“Good polite staff and service done, professionally”
 
“Pleasant and polite and great communication”
 
“I stressed about my situation, and she was very helpful so put my mind at ease.”

We also learnt more about what was causing higher levels of dissatisfaction, which included our capability to deliver services right first time, the time it took to fully complete repairs and the speed at which we were able to deal with customers’ requests and queries. From the feedback we received, we focused our efforts on where we could improve the services we deliver to our customers.

 

We will strive to continue working to these standards and are very grateful to have received recognition in the Good Practice Compendium.