Assessment waiting times letter review - People Bank involvement

1. Is this letter for any assessment or specifically and client/carer assessment?

1. The opening makes it clearer that the letter is about a client/carer social care needs assessment.

2. Stating there is a delay, apologising and saying you monitor the waiting list feels obvious and unhelpful. It needs to get to the point.

2. The introduction of the letter has been changed to immediately confirm they are on the list for an assessment to reassure them they have not been forgotten. We will still explain why there is a delay, and our efforts to monitor this in a more succinct way, as not everyone will know.

3. The letter gives no clear indications of how much longer people might wait.

3. A sentence has been added to explain the current waiting times (this sentence will only be included if calculating the current waiting time is possible).

4. Do people already have copies of the leaflets mentioned or will they need to request one?

4. Leaflets will be included with the letter based on the individual. The sentence has been amended to make this clear and can be edited to reflect the leaflets sent to that person.

5. Replace the word ‘whether’ to ‘if’ in the sentence about being new to caring.

5. Wording changed as described in point 5.

6. The sentence about contacting us feels wordy.

6. Contact details sentence has been split up and shortened.

7. Can anyone get in touch e.g., someone calling on the clients’ behalf?

7. We have made it clear someone can contact us on a clients’ behalf, including who this could be.

8. Make it clearer that you can use the attached sheet of useful contacts for help in the meantime.

8. Adapted the layout to make the sentence clearer and referred to the useful contacts more directly.

9. Should the letter include contact details for a clients’/carers’ named worker?

9. The client/carer won’t have a named worker at this point.

10. The letter needs to feel more personal as opposed to an ‘automated’ letter.

10. The language has been changed in the letter from ‘we’ to ‘I’ where appropriate, and the person sending the letter is prompted to include their name.

11. Over all the letter feels too long and certain sentences could be cut out.

11. Some sentences have been moved to the useful contacts section, to make the main letter shorter.