Citizens’ Panel Newsletter

Issue 4: Winter 2008

Download a full colour copy of the newsletter 242.78 KB

In this newsletter:

• How does it all add up?
• Smile please!
• Alcohol
• Housing and Council Tax Benefits Service
• You are what you eat
• Your Opinion Matters

Welcome!

This is the latest Citizens’ Panel update where we tell you the results from our Winter 2008 survey. Thanks so much to all of you who took the time to fill in the questionnaires and send them back to us. The results are really helping us to make informed decisions when planning and developing services across the Council.

How does it all add up?

The Council published a four-page summary of the annual financial report and statement of accounts in the Tameside Citizen in September 2008 and we wanted to know if you think this is an effective way of communicating our financial information.

In total, 71% of you recalled seeing the Tameside Citizen in September 2008. Of this, 87% of you read at least some of it!

We’re really pleased with the feedback we got: around three-fifths (59%) of you found the annual report and summary accounts useful and 71% said you were happy with the level of detail contained in the annual report.

If you would like another chance to see the accounts they are available online at www.tameside.gov.uk/budget/statementofaccounts.

Smile Please!

NHS Tameside and Glossop  hopes to put a smile on the face of local residents by improving access to dentists. Tooth decay is almost completely preventable and causes avoidable pain and distress so improving oral health across the local population is key to improving the overall health of our residents.

You told us that:

• One in ten of you had some problem with your teeth and gums over the last six months.
• The good news is that 8 out of 10 of you have your own dentist and 90% of you who have a dentist visited them in the last 12 months. This is much better than in 2006 when only 7 out of 10 had their own dentist and only 80% of those had seen the dentist in the previous 12 months.

Alcohol

Although small quantities of alcohol every now and then are fine, too much can be bad for your health and can lead to anti-social behaviour and even violence. We wanted to become better informed about Tameside’s drinking habits.

Nearly half of you (42%) agree that alcohol consumption is having an impact on their health.

Most of you think the biggest factors which increase people’s alcohol use are:

• stress or depression
• stress at work
• allowing street drinking
• low prices and discounts on alcohol

Help is available

If you or someone you know is worried about alcohol misuse the Council website lists places in Tameside you can go for free and confidential advice, help and support.

These include:

ADS (Addiction Dependency Solutions)
Good Hope Mill, 98 Bentinck Street, Ashton-under-Lyne OL6 7SN
Tel: 0161 343 1133
Fax: 0161 343 7787
Web: www.adsolutions.org.uk 

Branching Out (Drug and Alcohol Services for Under 19s)
Number 31 Clarence Arcade, Stamford Street, Ashton-under-Lyne OL6 7PT
Tel: 0161 342 7605
Fax: 0161 342 7692

Housing and Council Tax Benefits Service

We asked you about any experiences you might have had with the Housing and / or Council Tax benefit service over the last year and about your views on the Council as a whole.

Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit can help you pay your Rent and Council Tax if you have a low income and have savings of less than £16,000.

Our benefits service is busy - it pays out £79 million each year to 24,000 Tameside residents. It receives over 16,000 new benefit claims and deals with 45,000 changes in circumstances every year.

For panel members that had been in contact with the benefits service, the survey results showed:

• 82% of residents found it easy to contact the benefits service
• 78% thought staff were helpful and polite
• Only a small number (9%) were dissatisfied with the service they had received

When contacting the Council, most of you said that the most important issues are the following:

• Finding it easy to contact the service you need 
• Staff being helpful and polite
• Getting through in a reasonable length of time
• Being given understandable and accurate advice

The three areas that we most need to improve upon: 

• Making it easy for residents to find the service they need to use
• Ensuring residents only have to contact the Council once for an enquiry to be dealt with
• Ensuring residents feel they can rely on the person they have contact with to resolve the query 

You are what you eat

Eating healthily can have fantastic benefits like helping you feel better, sleep better and have more energy to do all the things you enjoy! Eating more of the right foods can also help you to maintain a healthy weight, which in turn can reduce your risk of diabetes, arthritis and high blood pressure.

97% of you are aware that the food people eat affects their health and 76% of you either already have a healthy diet or have made changes to what you eat in order to improve your health.

This is great news and NHS Tameside and Glossop  is really keen to offer help and support to people who want to lose weight, get fitter or just improve their overall health.

Our website has loads of tips and advice on healthy eating as well as information about other health issues such as smoking and exercise. You can access all this at
www.tameside.gov.uk/health/nutrition

If you’re worried about your health, why not call the Health Improvement team on 0161 366 2000 and ask about any free programmes going on in your area.

Your opinion matters

The information we receive from our Citizens’ Panel really helps us to see how we’re doing as a Council and what areas we need to do more work on. We wanted some feedback on the Panel itself, so you could tell us how we can make it easier for you to have your say.

We’re really glad that so many of you are satisfied with our questionnaires and that most of you said that filling in a questionnaire from time-to-time is your preferred way of having your say about Council services.

We really want all of our panel members to be able to have their say about issues affecting Tameside. If you think we could make this easier for you by providing you with a large print questionnaire or newsletter, please let us know.

We hope that you find these results useful and interesting too, and that you will continue to share your views with us by filling in the next survey.

We are pleased with your satisfaction with our questionnaires

On-line for a Greener Tameside? 

If you have easy access to the internet, why not fill the next questionnaire in on-line? Not only does it help us keep costs low but it helps the environment by reducing paper usage!

If you’re happy for us to stop sending you paper copies of the survey and to start filling in the online version please go to: www.tameside.gov.uk/consultation.