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Sally, from Portsmouth became Chair of VIVID Impact, our customer scrutiny panel, in October 2022. We recently visited her at home to find out more about the fantastic work she’s been doing for VIVID Impact, as well as where she lives and in the wider community (for which she won a Pride of Portsmouth award!). Here’s what Sally had to say….
Hi Sally, what do you like about where you live?
I love where I live as my lounge looks over where I used to play as a child. It brings back so many memories. I can sit here and reminisce. As soon as I viewed my apartment, I knew it was the one I wanted. That was 7 years ago. I was born in Portsmouth and have lived in the city all my life.
I hear you’ve helped create a brilliant community spirit here.
I live in a fairly new block and soon after I moved in, I decided to become a Neighbourhood Volunteer because I wanted to bring all of my neighbours together and improve the experience and spirit for everyone living here.
Now we have a fantastic time supporting each other and laying on events and outings. We really came together during the pandemic. During this time, it was difficult for the children to play, so together we arranged all sorts of things to make the best of the situation. On Hallowe’en, children couldn’t knock on their neighbours’ doors, so people put sweets outside their doors, we took part in the weekly clap for the NHS, and we also decided to do a clap for the contractors replacing our cladding at the time, organising cakes and drawings from the children living here to show our appreciation. We’re now looking at forming a residents’ committee.
I also do a lot more in the wider community and I recently won an award.
That’s amazing, what was your award in recognition of?
I won a Pride of Portsmouth 'Volunteer of the Year' award in November 2022 for my work as a patient experience volunteer. The awards are to recognise the work of NHS staff members, teams and volunteers in Portsmouth who have gone “above and beyond”.
During Covid, I set up a bag drop where family and friends of patients could drop off belongings and gifts. It was great being able to make a difference to patients and visitors, keeping families in touch with each other in this way.
How long have you been on VIVID Impact?
I joined VIVID Impact five years ago and became Chair last year. I’m really pleased to have led on the completion of two scrutiny panel views since becoming Chair – one on the repairs service and the other on accessibility of VIVID’s services.
VIVID Impact fed back that it needs to be clearer which repairs customers are responsible for and which repairs VIVID undertakes, and since then a full list has been published on your website. We also said that customers are waiting too long for repairs so I’m glad to hear you have a focus on this to improve the speed of completing routine repairs.
Following our feedback, VIVID’s going to keep customers more informed on the range of ways we can communicate and access information about your services through the website including features to help if you’re visually impaired, have dyslexia or are hard of hearing. This is in response to us sharing that customers want to know alternative ways of communicating with us you other than phone and email.
I enjoy my role and it keeps me busy!
If this has inspired you to want to get involved in helping to shape our services and support your local community, then let us know. We offer lots of different involvement opportunities that cater for different interests, preferences and capacity. Find out more here.