Annual Review 2020 Results

By Joanne Davies, Charityworks graduate and Meike Beckford, Lead Director

 

The results are in for the Dosh Annual Review 2020 and they are excellent!

We asked all of the people we support, their support staff and families to complete a survey telling Dosh how we did this year. Almost 200 people replied with their thoughts and what they would like to see in future from Dosh. We asked you to tell us what you think about Dosh as a whole as well as lots of different parts of our service to see where our strengths lie and where more work needs to be put in to make sure you are getting the most out of Dosh.

The Annual Review results (which you can download here) show an overview of what you thought of Dosh’s work this past year. Here are some of the highlights:

  • 92% of people who responded were either Happy or Very Happy with the support Dosh offers.
  • 94% said Dosh kept their money safe.
  • 87% of people who responded said they were able to use their money to do the things they want.

“Manager xxx offers and recommends Dosh to all new clients and believes it offers best possible way for vulnerable people to have and look after money”

“I feel like [my advocate] knows me and understands me. But she will make sure I am not wasting my money unnecessarily which means my money is safe.”

“[My advocate] is amazing, she is very involved and makes people’s dreams come true”

  • 85% said their money plan included all the things they enjoy doing.
  • 85% of people who responded said Dosh sent them their money and paid their bills on time.
  • 85% agreed or strongly agreed that their advocates know them, their likes and dislikes

Learning from the review and what we do now

We also want to get better based on your feedback from the review.

“Bills paid and managed, budgets adaptive and person centred and maximising income means [the people we support] have money to enjoy life”

We know that payments and communication are working really well for most people, but we don’t get it right all the time so we could still get better. We have already increased the number of people working in our finance team, so they have time for everyone’s requests and we are reviewing our processes to help us make payments processes as smooth as possible.

We will keep working with you to make the Money Plan easier to understand and enable you to use it between visits and ensure you have access to this even when we can’t visit in person.

Our experience from the Coronavirus lockdown has shown how important online and card payments are and we are looking at new ways to enable more online payments and give people access to cards where needed if they can’t do this themselves. Our aim is to enable people to be as independent as possible with their money and be able to use money for the things they want. This means we will still support you to look at what options are already out there from banks etc. that would give you your own account. For those people that can’t manage this, we are piloting a debit card through the Dosh account and hope to be able to roll this out in 2021.

“[Our advocates] are lovely, they know [this person’s] likes and dislikes, speak to her with respect and never rush her”

As we have not been able to visit most people in person for a while, we wanted to ask how you had found remote support and what you would like going forward. Most people said they would like a mixture of in-person and remote visits. We will work with you in 2021 to test this and think about how we can still be financial advocates for everyone we support without seeing them so often.

 

You can download the full results here or read about our Dosh Promise to understand the standards we are working to.

 

December 8th, 2020

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Dosh Newsletter Autumn 2017

Dosh logo

Welcome to the Dosh Money Pack Newsletter for Autumn 2017!

This edition of the newsletter was put together by Lia Herbert, our new Dosh Financial Assistant.

Download the full newsletter to read all our updates and tweet us @DoshTweets or contact us to tell us what you think.

This is a quarterly newsletter and the next one will be out in the summer. If you have ideas for future newsletter pieces, please get in touch!

This edition includes:

 Dosh logo

The Dosh team

  

Dosh News

   

Dosh’s 10th anniversary

review

Annual review 2017: The Results!

 

Housing Benefit in supported housing

 

Changes to PIP criteria

Car

Blue Badge Scheme – changes on eligibility under PIP

 Story

Financial Advocacy in Action

December 11th, 2017

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Annual review 2016 results

By Meike Beckford, Financial Advocacy Manager for Dosh

Between March and June 2016 we held an annual review. We asked the people we support and their families, support teams and care managers how we were doing. You can download the Dosh annual review 2016 results and read more about it here.

We were really pleased with the results overall. Almost everyone (97%) said they are happy with Dosh’s support. This includes people supported and circles of support.

“Since Jane has been [my brother] John’s* financial advocate there has been a huge weight off my mind. Jane is very supportive and explains things in a clear & concise way and supports staff to manage John’s money. Could not do without her!”

People said that we are meeting the Dosh Promise standards well, in particular keeping people’s money safe; people using their money to do the things they want and spending their money in the way they want.

People also said that we were good at being supportive, involving the people we support, getting to know them and being person-centred. This is a key part of what we do as financial advocates – we don’t just make sure the numbers add up (although we do do that!), we get to know the people behind the numbers and the lives they lead. This is why we co-created the Dosh Promise with the people we support. We support people to manage their money so that they can do what they want to do, achieve their goals and live happy lives.

From a social worker: “I believe that the support provided by Dosh reduces the risks of my client being financially exploited and also ensures that they are in receipt of their full benefit entitlement, whilst ensuring their savings are not detrimental to their benefits entitlement.”

There are of course also things we need to get better at and we’re always keen to improve the way we support people so this feedback is really important. Some people mentioned how quickly we process payments. In response to this, we have already got more people working on payments in our Dosh finance team and we have improved our standard payment times too.

We will also keep working with the people we support and their support teams to explain how we record decisions and make payments for bigger things. We use a best interest decision (BID) process with most people, if they can’t make the decision themselves. This protects the people we support and the people around them, but it can be a tricky process to get the hang of at the beginning. We are delivering more training sessions and workshops now to help people understand the BID process and help them get their BIDs cleared first time! If you’d like some training for your team, or want to know more about BIDs, please contact us.

Another team manager told us: “I am extremely happy with the service Laura* receives. Steph goes above and beyond, … [and] always ensures that she seeks Laura’s views and that Laura understands. She is person centred in her approach and Laura feels very comfortable with her.”

So, what’s next? We’re planning for our 2017 annual review now and thinking about how we can make our surveys and review process even more accessible. We want to hear from even more people and give them a chance to tell us what they think. We are also always thinking about how we can improve our support even more by improving our tools – for example our new financial profile that helps us get to know the people we support from the first visit.

If you would like to get involved in this or discuss your support from Dosh, please get in touch!

You can also download the results of the annual review 2016 here: Dosh annual review 2016 results

 

* Names of people we support have been changed.

January 25th, 2017

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