Ensuring service quality

We ensure that our services are in line with recognised good practice, to meet the high standards you need. Examples of this include:

• Our Legal Advice services, delivered from a number of our local centres, operate standards which are consistent with those established by the Government’s Legal Services Commission;
• Our Counselling services operate to standards approved by the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy;
• Our Chlamydia screening services are delivered in line with standards established by the Department of Health’s National Chlamydia Screening Programme;
• Our Community Sexual Health clinical services are delivered in line with standards established by the British Association for Sexual Health and HIV;
• All the health and social care information we produce meets the Information Standard, a national benchmark which certifies its reliability and accuracy.

However we know that it is not enough to just have services which are effective and safe. In addition they need to be well received by those who are using them, and to offer you a high quality experience.

We take our user satisfaction very seriously and we surveyed your feelings about our work during 2010/2011.

From this we know that 90% of the people we have surveyed rated their experience as ‘good’ or ‘very good’ and would recommend us to a friend. We have also had countless compliments from you, which have all been very welcome.

However, we also know that of the more than100,000 people who used our services in 2010/2011, 29 of you were unhappy and complained about that. In every case we were able to respond in fewer than 20 days and we made changes to our services as a result of your feedback.