Consumer Participation | mcm

Melbourne Citymission welcomes feedback. You, your family, carer and friends have the right to give feedback or be heard on any matter that worries or concerns you. We want to improve what we do by learning from what you have to say. We welcome feedback at any time.

Consumer Participation at Disability Services

Melbourne Citymission has recently written some new rules about how you and the people who are in your life can participate at Melbourne Citymission, while you are receiving a service at Disability Services. This is known as the Consumer Participation Policy for Disability Services.

Key things to know about Consumer Participation at Disability Services:

• ‘Consumer’ means you, your family, carer, advocate, significant other. It also covers people who are on a wait list for a service from Disability Services. All of these people can be involved, make a complaint and take on roles in Consumer Participation activities at Disability Services.
• There is a Consumer Participation Reference Committee made up of service users, a carer representative, staff and a Melbourne Citymission Board member. The members are on the committee for up to two years. Each year, we work on a plan of Consumer Participation activities, which work towards strengthening and building the capacity for people to get involved and to give us feedback.
• We want you to be involved in decision making and giving feedback to Disability Services while you are receiving a service from Disability Services.
• All levels of staff at Disability Services play an important part in supporting you to be involved in decision making and giving feedback at Disability Services.
• Disability Services will support you to become involved, depending on resources that we have available. For example, you might need transport and respite care to come to a working group. We do not want you to be disadvantaged by agreeing to participate.
• There are many different types of programs across Disability Services so there needs to be a lot of different ways offered by Melbourne Citymission for people to be involved. For example, you might prefer to know what is going on by watching a film or speaking to a person, rather than reading information.

Newsletter

The committee develops the “Be involved!” newsletter that goes out to service users and their families three times a year. This has a feedback form at the back of the newsletter with a paid self addressed envelope. You can submit your feedback to us by filling in this form. Our past newsletters will shortly be availabe to download here. In the meantime, to request a hard copy please contact Helen Parker on the contact details listed below.

Feedback

All feedback goes back to the Senior Manager of the program that you receive support from. The results of any changes that are made as a result of your feedback are then presented to the Consumer Participation committee so that they know what is being improved or what else may need to be done if there is still a problem.

Who to contact

Should you require any further information or wish to discuss your feedback in person please contact:

Helen Parker, Project Worker - Practice and Culture
Phone: 03 9487 9214
Email: hparker@mcm.org.au

Melbourne Citymission wants to improve what we do by learning from what you have to say. We welcome your feedback.

For more information