The voice for public services
ECS is an independent Community Interest Company that specialises in Community Engagement and Consultation, Social Research, Independent Advocacy and Healthwatch services. We are one of the largest providers of local Healthwatch services in the country, supporting hundreds of thousands of people every year to have their voices heard.
We play a key role in challenging and influencing social policies and practices to make our communities better places and help empower people to have a voice and influence in decisions about health and social care services which affect their lives.
We work with a wide range of clients including Local Authorities and the NHS, The Prison Service and Social Housing and Education sectors. Our bespoke offer helps our clients gather evidence and insight to improve the services they deliver to the public.
Our services
We offer a range of services and facilities for our clients as we want everyone to benefit from the best possible health, social care and wellbeing services. We are flexible and responsive in our approach, delivering quality solutions that are tailored to your requirements. We focus of the following four service areas.
Social Research & Insight
Providing the Evidence you Need
As a member of the Market Research Society (MRS), we use a range of in-depth and high-level research methodologies to deliver reports to our clients that contain the quality insights they need to improve their services. Using a combination of tailored in-depth and high-level research techniques, including questionnaires, surveys, focus and discussion groups, our aim is to help you put the public’s voice at the heart of every decision.
All our research is bespoke and tailored to our clients’ requirements. Our clients identify the areas they need to know more about, and we deliver the insight to help improve things.
Community Engagement and Consultation
Make Better Informed Decisions
Engaging Communities - it’s in our name and is central to what we do. The more our clients engage with their communities to find out what they think and what they want, the better the decision making.
Often, we find that there are groups within communities that can be hard to reach, perhaps because they are in a minority or simply don’t think that their voice will be heard. That’s where we come in. Whether you need to engage on a singular, group or large-scale basis, we can provide the right solution. We will work with you to design and deliver the community engagement activities you need.
Independent Advocacy
Empowering people to have their voice heard
We provide a range of independent advocacy services including:
• Independent Mental Health Advocacy
• Independent Mental Capacity Advocacy and Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards
• Relevant Persons Paid Representatives
• NHS Complaints Advocacy
• Care Act Advocacy
We currently deliver independent advocacy services across the Midlands and North of England. We hold the Quality Performance Mark (QPM) and all our advocates hold the nationally recognised advocacy qualification.
Healthwatch Services
ECS has been delivering Healthwatch since its inception in 2013 and has developed an innovative approach to delivering highly successful local Healthwatch services.
We now bring our considerable experience of delivering successful Healthwatch to ten areas across England, giving local people the chance to speak out about their concerns and healthcare priorities. Each Healthwatch that we deliver has a local team and an independent Advisory Board of local volunteers. We use our infrastructure as a research organisation to support the delivery of local Healthwatch projects, sharing our findings and recommendations to help health service providers find new and innovative ways to deliver better quality services.
What we offer in a Nutshell
Today, many public bodies are Outsourcing their marketing research, simply because they lack an in-house section dedicated to providing such research services. No research is carried out without a reason. Anyone commissioning such works has a problem they need solving, or a situation which needs investigating. In all cases what is wanted is ‘actionable’ results. The type of research needed could be either Quantitative (all about numbers) or Qualitative (more about things that can be observed – phenomena - but are not easily measurable). Plus, if improvements to a situation are required, some form of Benchmarking will be needed so that any progress can be measured.
ECS is all about providing the best data collection / research methodologies, combined with enlightening analysis, all with the aim of providing solutions and the answers to those ‘tough questions’ which bedevil many communities.
Our Research Services
Any research process should be carried out paying the required level of attention to Segmentation, Demographics and Focus Groups. In many instances some form of consumer research will be required and consumer insights desired.
How We Gather The Data
Sometimes the old-fashioned ways are best. This is why we often carry out face to face surveys. These offer a unique way of gathering data and ensuring community and resident engagement. The raw information gathered can be priceless, but so can the reactions to the survey itself. This ‘qualitative’ data says a lot about what the community really thinks.
With ‘face to face surveys’, our professional market research interviewers take people through a carefully constructed questionnaire (the words used can affect the results if you are not very careful).
Sometimes we build online communities, carefully selecting the participants to ensure the best results. These communities and the related discussion forums allow quick polls and an exchange of views, all of which give an insight into what that community really thinks, as well as revealing any hidden issues and problems.
Another system we often use is telephone surveys. These are very cost efficient, especially when the community being analysed is geographically dispersed.
Focus groups offer another alternative. When guided by our trained moderators, who use ‘creative deliberative techniques’, they can really get to grips with a subject, exploring it in a highly detailed and revealing way.
Another way of deeply delving into a topic is using in-depth interviewing techniques. These are often combined with other methodologies.
There is always the possibility of conflict and disagreement in any community, something that is better dealt with than left to fester. This requires what is known as ‘Mutual Understanding’ or ‘Conflict Groups’. By ensuring that both parties understand the situation from the others’ perspective, an informed understanding can be reached and a platform to solve the problem is thus created.
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