Drug & Alcohol support service survey review - People Bank involvement

Overview

East Sussex County Council is running a survey to gather insight to inform how the new drug and alcohol treatment service should look, when the contract renews in 2025. This includes the use of a survey for the residents of East Sussex to share their views. We asked People Bank members to user test this survey, to ensure it was engaging, clear and asking the right questions.

Our user testers said:

1. People may feel unable to contribute if they have no experience of drugs or alcohol.
2. They wanted to know more about those services which were mentioned in the survey but which they had not heard of.
3. We need to ask about how to better raise awareness of the services available.
4. Our question on what other types of support would be beneficial was unclear, and all answer options were valid.
5. Some questions changed from asking about them personally to asking about people in general, which felt unhelpful.
6. Our question around barriers to accessing support services covered two different topics in one (practical and emotional) and needed separating.
7. Why are we asking about communities’ perception of people seeking drug or alcohol support separately?
8. People may not see why this section is needed or relevant.

How we responded:

1. Assured people that everyone can take part regardless of experience, nearer the top of the introduction page.
2. Included links for further information underneath where services are mentioned.
3. Added a question on the best ways to advertise support services to raise awareness.
4. Rephrased the question on types of support and asked people to give their top 3 choices from the options.
5. Questions were rephrased to ask about you personally or someone you know.
6. Separated our question on barriers into two questions.
7. We have not made changes, as we want to identify any differences in perception of drug vs alcohol support.
8. We have not made changes, as this will help us see if and how various combinations of experience with drugs or alcohol affect a person’s answer.

“The feedback from the People Bank was insightful and prompted us to make change. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this” - Project Lead.