What is Social Accounting?
At DSN we are proud of our services but we want to do what we can to make them even better and to make sure that our Service Users get the maximum benefit from the services they receive.
Social Accounting is a system that helps us examine what we do and develop our services. By looking at what we do and collecting feedback from the people we work with, we should be able to see where things could be improved.
In these challenging financial times it is important that we evidence what we are doing and how we are providing value for money, in order to convince funders to invest in our services. By looking at the services we provide and measuring the impacts that those services have on people’s lives, we are able to demonstrate the value of the work we do.
Collecting feedback from the people who receive the services means that they get a chance to be involved in the planning of the services and how the services are run.
We hope that the process of social accounting will help us to raise the profile of DSN and make people more aware of what we are doing and how well we are doing it.
How do we do it?
We collect information in 2 parts:
Part 1 Facts & Figures, for example:
· how many people we have supported
· how many pieces of equipment we have supplied
· how many training courses have been delivered etc.
Part 2 Feedback from Service Users and other Stakeholders
· Questionnaires,
· Meetings,
· Positive comments, complaints, suggestions etc.
What do we find out?
From the surveys we have carried out so far we have been reassured to see that the majority of people who responded believe that DSN does achieve the aims it sets itself and they are happy with the service they receive. Some of the feedback comments have been very positive.
However, there have also been some negative comments and this gives us opportunities to examine what we do and identify some improvements that could be made.
How can you help?
We hope people recognise the value of this positive exercise and support it by giving us feedback and encouraging others to get involved too. Stakeholder’s views are important to us and will help us to prove the value of the work we do and continue to improve our services.