1

What is the purpose of the Hub Group?

The purpose of the HUB Group is to scrutinise accurately all parts of ARK’s performance to identify gaps in services or

make suggestions for improving services.

September 2016

If you become a Hub Group member, you will mostly look at the way ARK works, the way ARK does business, both for Housing and for Care and Support. As a Hub Group Member you and other Group members will decide what parts of the business should be looked at.

As a Hub group member you have to: Stick to the Agenda and topics Switch off your mobile Give everyone the chance to speak Listen to each other Respect each other Agree what can and cannot be shared with the rest of staff Don’t mention names of Support Worker or other staff. Talk about

the issue not the person At each meeting we agree some actions and sometimes some

members volunteer to take some action.

2

The Hub Group was set up in February 2016. It started with 4 days of training which covered:

The Purpose of the HUB Group

How members were going to work together

What scrutiny means

The Role of the Scottish Housing Regulator—Linda Johnstone from Tenant Information Service came to the training.

Learning to listen Giving and receiving

feedback At the end of the training

we agreed some Actions Ann Lyon came to the

training to explain why the HUB Group was set up

The training was delivered by Sylvia Crick and Paddy Carstairs from ARC Scotland

Sylvia continue to be the facilitator of the HUB Group.

The members of the HUB Group during the Training

Sylvia Crick delivered the training and she is the facilitator of the HUB Group

What training did the Hub Group receive?

3

All of them have applied to become members

Who is on the Hub Group?

David Ledner - Dalkeith

Karen McDonald - Forfar

Callum McFarlane - Kelso

Angela Rennie - Forfar

Fiona Henderson - Edinburgh

David Tawse - Peebles

4

What we have been doing

Some Actions from the 1st meeting were: To check the ARK’s grades from the Care Inspectorate website. To ask Gloria and Sue for information about the Speak Out Groups. To invite Jane Gray to the next meeting.

At the 1st meeting we reminded ourselves of the Groundrules and invited Fiona Ross. Before the meeting every member had read the Annual Report on the Housing Charter. We agreed some questions to ask Fiona about the

Report. The Report said some things were not going as well as they should be, such as rents going up, tenant satisfaction going down in some areas and houses being left empty for a long time, meaning ARK loses money. Fiona answered all our questions and we were happy with most of her answers. We asked her to come back to a future meeting with more information.

Fiona Ross,

Head of Housing

Services

1st meeting

The Hub Group meets every 2 months We have met 3 times

5

What we have been doing

2nd meeting

The Hub Group meets every 2 months We have met 3 times

We invited Jane Gray to the 2nd meeting to answer questions about the recent changes in ARK support services. We wanted to know:

Why were people not

told about the changes

before they happened?

Why are there no

Team Leaders now?

Why did the changes

happen?

Jane Gray,

ARK Chief

Executive

Jane told us the changes were made because people had been saying a different structure for staffing would work better. They did not tell everyone before they happened because not everyone would be affected by the changes.

We asked Jane if Skype can be put into all offices, so we can speak together in between meetings if we need to.

Jane will come to part of every

meeting to answer our questions.

Serena joined the group as new Administrator Assistant

Some Actions from the 2nd meeting were: We looked at a Report about how many complaints ARK had got and we

decided to invite Ann Lyon, the chair of ARK Board of Management, to ask her some questions.

We will email Bobby Duffy about staff being able to support people to buy CDs from their tablets.

We will think about writing a letter to MSPS.

6

What we have been doing

3rd meeting

The Hub Group meets every 2 months We have met 3 times

How long should it take for a complaint

to go through the process from start to finish?

We invited Ann Lyon to the 3rd meeting to talk about the process for Complaints and John Rankin joined the meeting. We asked them:

How many complaints do ARK get on

average each year?

John Rankin, Head of

Quality and Compliance

Ann Lyon, Chair of ARK

Board of Management

Ann explained that there is a complaints process and the person who receive the complaint has 5 days to respond.

If it is a complicated situation, this person can have 20 days because the organisation needs to investigate.

John said that in 2012 they got just 15 complaints. Then in 2013 the

process changed and since then the average number of complaints is

around 120 each year.

7

What we have been doing

3rd meeting

The Hub Group meets every 2 months We have met 3 times

Does the Board look at the themes coming from

complaints to see what are the common issues

coming up? If so what they do about it?

Does the Board have any involvement in Complaints?

Can anyone

join the

Board?

Ann said the job of the Board is

to check ARK’s work, that’s why

all members need to have

different skills. Anyone can

come to the meeting as an

observer but they cannot speak

without agreement.

Ann said that the

Board gets a report

setting out

Complaints in general,

not as individuals. The

Board can learn how

to make things better

and they find out

about this partly by

using information that

comes from

Complaints.

8

What we have been doing

3rd meeting

The Hub Group meets every 2 months We have met 3 times

We identified 3 themes that came up every quarter in the Complaints report: 1) Problems with shifts not being covered or then

being covered by agencies’ staff; 2) Support plans not being followed; 3) Communication issues – including not being

informed of staff changes.

We also talked about how we communicate with the Board—such as going to the Board meeting. We decided to get a list of Board members and invite someone else from the Board to a future meeting.

John agreed to come back to

us with more information

about the themes.

What people are getting out from the meetings

Learning new things

Getting more confident about speaking out

Learning about how to work well together

We are all learning what ARK does well and what can be improved