Throughout the past year we asked over 6,000 of our residents what you thought of the services we provided. We know that listening to what you say and acting on your feedback is essential to improving the quality of the services we provide you and the communities you live in.
We held focus groups, resident scrutiny panels, online surveys and face to face interviews and your feedback has helped us plan how to improve services.

We've had to continue to think differently to ensure we can continue to engage with you and deliver our frontline services safely during the  pandemic. Throughout the year, as government restrictions changed we produced our own roadmaps with key dates to keep everyone informed and reinforce the message that we were still carrying out all essential services, maintenance and we're still here to support you and your families.








 

Our rapid adaption to the coronavirus pandemic in 2019/20 meant we were well positioned to continue to deliver our frontline services in 2020/21. Following the great feedback we had from on our wellbeing calls in the first lockdown, our volunteers from teams across the organisation made over 2,000 calls to  older and vulnerable residents. We checked in to see how they are doing, made sure they have access to the support they need and arranged a call back from anyone who had questions or asked for help. 

"I  now know Origin are here for us should we need support." 

Case study: Our Social Housing White Paper event 

We supported our Spotlight Panel of residents to deliver their first online event on the Social Housing White Paper.  The paper was introduced by the government to make sure the voices of tenants are heard, they are safe and live in good quality homes. The acting chair of our Spotlight Panel introduced the session with a round up of what she learnt from a recent HQN resident conference and gave our other residents an overview of the Social Housing White paper from her perspective. To follow this up our expert guest speaker, Alison Inman, gave her view on the White paper to give insight on: Why has it come about, what got dropped from green paper, is it realistic, Why should Origin residents care?  

This was followed by a Q&A where our Chief Executive, Carol Carter spoke about Origin’s response to the Charter for Social Housing and our Director of Operations spoke about our current resident involvement activities and how we can continue to engage meaningfully with our residents. 
 We're really happy the event ran so well, and would like to thank our Spotlight Panel for all of their work. We ran a poll at the end of the event where 80% of participants felt the event was informative and fulfilled what they wanted from attending it. 

Working 'Together' with you

This year we've continued our work alongside residents to bring to life our resident engagement strategy: 'Together', so together we can improve services and the communities you live in.  Getting together safely in person was difficult throughout the year, so during the Coronavirus lockdowns we delivered  Virtual Neighbourhood Explorers. Neighbourhood Explorers is one of our Community Development projects, where colleagues volunteer to spend an afternoon visiting some of our communities, meeting our residents and finding out what they'd like us to do to improve their homes and communities. 

You can find out where our Neighbourhood Explorers will be visiting next and how to get involved when we visit your area.

Our Executive Question and Answer sessions

We introduced our Executive Q&A, so our leadership team could answer any questions from you, our residents. These ranged from general enquiries about what we do, to questions about what we’re doing to help our residents through the changes that the coronavirus pandemic has caused in many people’s lives. We never imagined the pandemic would continue for so long and we'd still be running these sessions throughout 2021.

To make it quick and easy for everyone to view the answers most important to them, we grouped information into key topics before recording the Executive Team answering questions which we then published on Youtube, and promoted on our website and Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook. 

There are lots of ways we can work together to improve services, look at how we invest in the communities we work in and much more. This year we recruited 15 new residents onto our Spotlight panel and scrutiny group to give us an independent view of our policies and the way we work, to highlight what works well and what needs improving.
If you'd like get involved please let us know by emailing community.development@originhousing.org.uk .

To read the full 'Together' strategy please click here to download a copy.