Consultation Hub

During this project we engaged with West Sussex residents using Supported Living services between November 2019 and February 2020.  This project included an online survey. six drop-in events, two carers focus groups and informtion from the Learning Disability Partnership Board.

 Responses were received from individuals, family and friend carers and self advocacy groups. There was a limited response from mental health customers which will necessitate further consultation around this group to understand their perspective more fully.

There were three main questions:

• 1. What is important to you?
• 2. What housing support do you want?
• 3. What do you want to tell us about your experience?

The results of this engagement are available in the results section below.

The current West Sussex Supported Lviving Framework contract is due to end in March 2021. The retendering of the Supported Living Framework will provide an opportunity to address some of the issues raised around types of placements and will go some way to support recruitment and retention in the market.

The consultation was requested by seven local councils located on the Manhood Peninsula.  The main objective was to assess the public feeling towards self-funding the mobile waste service that runs on consecutive weeks at Selsey and the Witterings.

The survey asked service catchment residents about:

• Whether or not they would be prepared to pay an additional £5 – 7 per household per year through their Town or Parish Council tax in preference to withdrawing the existing service.
• Who uses this mobile service, how often and for what purpose.

Approximately 74% of responders positively agreed to paying an extra amount on their council tax to pay for the service.

Anonymised results have been shared with the seven local councils who are currently considering the results of the consultation.  A decision is expected by the end of March on whether or not to go ahead with the self-funding.

• Whether you supported our proposal for libraries to be closed between 6.00pm and 7.00pm and for the Mobile Library Service to cease in order to make the required saving whilst maintaining our 36 libraries across the county.
• What should our priorities be if we were no longer able to run our Mobile Library Service?
• What impact would it have on you if our libraries were no longer open between 6.00pm and 7.00pm?

• 2,079 people or organisations responded.
• 42% of respondents supported the overall proposal to reduce evening opening and cease the Mobile Library Service, 41% opposed it, while 17% didn't express an opinion.
• Of the 172 respondents who answered as Mobile Library users, 56 stated that they only used the Mobile Library Service; of these 172 respondents 44 opposed the proposal.
• Of the 849 respondents who opposed the proposal, 261 used one of the impacted libraries between 6.00pm and 7.00pm in the last month (69% of those who opposed the reduction in evening opening did not use the libraries proposed to have their opening hours reduced).
• Preferred mitigations in regard to the Mobile Library Service were to promote existing services such as Home Library Direct and working with parishes to provide a Select and Collect service in local communities.

• Feedback suggested that the promotion of Home Library Direct and partnership working with parishes for our Select and Collect offer were seen as priorities for our Mobile Library users. We will action these and use postcode data to see where these options were most commonly chosen and explore these with corresponding parishes.
• We will talk to users that have adopted Home Library Direct, Select and Collect, Digital Library Plus or Reading Friends to ask about their experience of using the new service. This could be done a year after implementation.
• Saturday openings will be maintained with increased active promotion of our digital services.
• We will ensure that we recommend either quietest times in the week or locations in the building most suitable for users that value a quiet atmosphere.