Nehemiah United Churches HA
Contact Officer: Lucy Hales, Director of Housing and Support Services
“Working with Yvonne has been a very positive experience. She very quickly identified the challenges for NUCHA, delivering some difficult messages sensitively throughout the organisation. She has been enthusiastic throughout the process giving the organisation confidence to go forward to deliver an excellent customer engagement framework. She has worked with us to identify tailored solutions that meet the very specific needs of our business. Her support has been invaluable”.
Northwards ALMO
Contact officer: Steve Finnegan, Head of Business Effectiveness and Communications
“At Northwards Housing we got off to a bit of a false start with our tenant scrutiny and felt we needed someone with Yvonne’s level of experience and expertise to help us sort out where we were going wrong. She wasn’t afraid to make radical recommendations about the future direction of our tenant scrutiny and we’ve since been busy implementing them!
Yvonne carried out an independent review of our scrutiny arrangements over a few weeks concluding in a helpful report to enable us to put measures in place to start to turn things around. What was particularly helpful was her flexibility and willingness to work alongside tenants and involve them fully in the review process; so they didn’t feel they were being unfairly scrutinised themselves. Yvonne is full of ideas and was able to share lots of useful tips with us (and at no extra charge!) so we really felt we achieved value for money out of this short intervention. I’m pleased to say that since the review we have new arrangements in place for tenant scrutiny and we are now beginning to see the results”
Places for People
Contact officer: Jon Prasher, Head of Diversity & Marketing.
“I have known Yvonne Davies for many years and have worked closely with her during my five years at Places for People.
Yvonne has a real skill in focusing and summarizing good practice and being able to link this with a real strong business case to her presentations, this not only give the organisation she works with excellent profile it also allows those who are participating in her work and presentations to have a clear way forward and how they can add value through the work they do.
I have worked with Yvonne as a trainer and she has excellent facilitation skills in bringing the best out of the group and allowing them all to move forward.
One of her strongest skills is understanding the concept of co-regulation how it can work effectively and how you can improve tenants and customers in a meaningful way.
Our latest piece of work is working with Yvonne and training our National Customer Body, our Diversity Advisory Panel and our Customer Inspectors/Reviewers and how best to add value to the business.
Yvonne’s recent work with the Audit Commission places her very well in a position where she is able to talk with real knowledge and experience about the regulation and inspection process and how this links effectively to outcomes and good practice examples.
I would wholeheartedly recommend Yvonne to work with other similar organisations as this is a great way of getting the best from your involved customers understanding how to respond to regulation and potential inspection and how to deliver grow and enhance best practice to focus on outcomes to customers.”
Home Housing group
Contact Officer: Julie Douglas, People Management and Development
“Yvonne has recently helped us review our existing EIA process, in addition to the areas that could be improved Yvonne also confirmed the areas that we were doing well and that demonstrated best practise. – Thank you Yvonne we now have an EIA process that is robust and fit for purpose”.
Cheshire West and Chester Council
Contact Officer: Karen Murphy, Resident Involvement Manager
Yvonne has been working with us at Cheshire West and Chester Council for the past 8 months, training and developing a group of residents to perform scrutiny of the Housing Management Service.
When they started out, these residents had little or no previous experience or involvement in Council services. During this short period of time, Yvonne has successfully trained and built the group into a team of skilled and knowledgeable Customer Service Inspectors (CSI’s), who have completed two full service reviews and are currently working on their third inspection. The findings of their reviews have been turned into action plans by the organisation and are already leading to significant improvements in the way we deliver services in the future.
Following the success of this group, we have now been able to recruit more new residents to join the CSI’s and also to set up a team of Mystery Shoppers, who will support the work of the CSI’s and test service standards.
As well as training this new group of residents, Yvonne has also been delivering training to managers and staff on the changes brought about by co-regulation, localism and welfare reform.
Yvonne’s knowledge and awareness of what is happening on a national and local level is invaluable and her facilitation and coaching skills are excellent; quickly making people feel at ease and bringing the best out of them. She has a warm and engaging personality and builds up excellent rapport either on a one-to-one basis, or in a group environment. Thanks to Yvonne’s support and guidance, our resident scrutiny groups are now knowledgeable and confident in the work they do and are highly regarded and respected by the organisation.
I would have no hesitation in recommending Yvonne to any organisation that has a passion and desire to continuously drive up standards of service to its’ customers”.
Housing Diversity Network
Contact officer: Clifton Robinson, Chief Executive
“Between February 2011 and April 2011, HDN organised four high profile regional events in Plymouth, Norwich, Manchester and Sunderland, around the themes of regulation and diversity.
Yvonne was our main speaker at each of these events and was extremely well received by our participants.
Yvonne is in uniquely qualified in many ways – she has hands-on senior management experience of the sector, has worked for the Audit Commission as Head of Housing and Regulation and, just as crucially, is able to put across her thoughts and her knowledge in an engaging and personable way.”
I am aware also that since leaving the Commission she has undertaken considerable work with tenant groups.
Finally, her commitment to diversity is excellent and the fact that I have recruited Yvonne to join HDN as one of our Associates so soon after she let the Commission would confirm our confidence in this commitment.”
Golden Gates Housing Trust
Contact officer: Can Kinsella Drew
“Yvonne has been pretty inspirational to me in both her role at the Audit Commission and also at HDN. I have had the pleasure of working with her in both capacities and she is only too willing to support, guide and help you no matter the situation.
Yvonne is extremely focussed on outcomes from processes rather than the processes themselves – this way of thinking is refreshing in a sector so focussed on people.
GGHT was the first housing association in the UK to be awarded the DNA Accreditation and what could have been a difficult process became fun and rewarding because of Yvonne’s friendly approach and constant smile! I couldn’t speak highly enough of her – mainly because she is so switched on to the constant changes within the sector but also because of her ability to react to them.”
Partners in Participation
Contact Officer: Linda Yeo, Liverpool Housing Trust
“Yvonne provided some Tenant Inspector training for some tenants from different Housing Associations in the Merseyside area who are members of PIP (Partners in Participation), a group of Housing Associations in May 2012.
Nothing was too much trouble for Yvonne, she was very flexible in her approach and took on board any comments/suggestions that were given to her regarding delivery of the training. The training was up to date and very informative and enjoyable. All of the tenants who attended the training course rated it as excellent.
Yvonne is very experienced and professional and it has been a pleasure working with her, I look forward to working with her again in the future.”
We will happily provide contact details and further references for our most recent work.