Five-year satisfaction high as Derventio sees leap in demand during Covid

Derventio residents have reported their highest level of satisfaction with the service for five years.

Derventio Housing Trust provides 600 bed spaces of accommodation across five counties for people who have recently been homeless. Asked for their overall level of satisfaction with their Derventio home, 95 per cent said they would recommend the organisation to someone else – the highest figure in a five-year period.

That was against a backdrop of a leap in demand for Derventio’s services during Covid, with 501 new residents requiring our help from 2020 to 2021, up from 327 the previous year.

Assistant director of strategy Jackie Carpenter said:

At Derventio we believe that everybody deserves a chance to succeed in life, and we’re proud of the work we do in providing homes for people who really need them, for a variety of reasons.

The people who come to us need comfort, help and safety – so we’re delighted that when we asked them what they thought of our service, they were so resoundingly positive.

As well as a high satisfaction rate with Derventio’s service, residents were also very happy with how well they were looked after by the organisation’s many caring staff, who are on hand to help them with their housing needs as well as provide additional support to help them get back on their feet – often after some very distressing personal situations.

Residents overwhelmingly said they felt treated with dignity and respect; that they felt safe; they were gaining the skills they needed to avoid being homeless in the future, and that living in a Derventio property was helping them make positive changes in their life.

One resident said: “I find Derventio staff to be thoughtful and considerate, patient, kind and understanding,” while another added: “Being at a stable address has prevented me from going back to prison.”

Jackie said:

Covid has clearly been dreadful for millions of us around the globe, and it has been extremely stressful for those people without secure homes. I think many of us had to dig deep into our reserves of strength during the lockdowns that started in 2020, but for those who were already in precarious homes, the situation has been very difficult indeed.

They say that any organisation depends on the quality of its staff, and that is certainly true for us at Derventio. Our staff are simply second to none in the way they treat everybody who comes to us for help with the dignity and respect that all human beings deserve. It’s great to see that our residents have responded so warmly to our question about how well they feel treated by our wonderful and nurturing employees.

One of Derventio’s employees, Julie Howells, has recently won a major national award for her work getting people back into the workplace. Julie, who is head of employability services at Derventio, was crowned Frontline Manager of the Year at the Employment Related Services Association (ERSA) awards, after impressing judges with the dedication she showed to her work.

As well as offering accommodation to those in need, Derventio also offers a range of other services to help vulnerable people see their way to a brighter future. These include Healthy Futures, a service supporting patients at Chesterfield Royal Hospital who are either without a home or lack a suitable one, and Growing Lives, based in Ilkeston, which provides learning activities such as gardening and crafts.