Focus Group at Jewish Care
Melbourne’s Jewish Care recently hosted a focus group of adults living with a disability to source important feedback to ensure an upcoming a customer satisfaction survey is accessible to as many members of our community as possible.
Working together
The group represented some of the most vulnerable in our community; with a diverse range of difficulties including physical and intellectual disability and mental health issues.
Participants were asked to place a numbered sticker on the ‘emoticon face’ that best described how they felt for each question. Votes were then tallied and discussion followed.
Bill Appleby, CEO Jewish Care described the exercise as an enormous success.
Mr Appleby said responses would be used to ensure accessibility of the survey, to be released next year, which would drive continuous improvement at Jewish Care.
“Engaging with this group presents challenges, as many require support to communicate their point of view. It is often assumed this population doesn’t have the capacity to participate in activities like focus groups or that it’s too difficult. In fact, three clients who attended said they had never before enjoyed such an experience.”
Jewish Care Policy and Research Manager Rachael Bajayo said the conscious decision to “live social inclusion through our work” at Jewish Care required pioneering new methodologies to include clients in a genuine discussion.
“The use of emoticons and a voting system was conceptually simple without compromising the quality of the information gained through the activity,” she said.
Quotes from participants included:
“Good to be part of the group, good feeling”
“Great – Thanks for the opportunity”
“Good, lots of opportunity to provide feedback on proposed changes and usefulness of survey”
