What was the project about?

ADASS is a national charity that works with professionals and people with experience to influence adult social care policy and improve services. They commissioned us to independently test how accessible and user-friendly Leeds City Council's Adult Social Care information is, both online and in person.

Healthwatch Leeds is committed to ensuring people can easily find and understand information about local health and care services. This project focused on identifying what's working well and where improvements could be made to make adult social care more accessible for everyone, including those facing additional communication barriers.

What is mystery shopping in adult social care?

Mystery shopping is a way of assessing services by asking trained volunteers to pose as members of the public seeking help or advice. In this project, our team used realistic scenarios such as helping a friend or relative find support. We approached the Council in different ways:

• Visiting a local community hub.
• Phoning the Adult Social Care team during working hours.
• Phoning out of hours.
• Reviewing the Leeds City Council website for helpful information.

Each experience was rated and recorded using a structured feedback form provided by ADASS.

Our group of volunteers came from various backgrounds. Some had used adult social care before, others hadn’t. This helped us capture multiple experiences, including how services work for people who might be less familiar with the system or speak English as a second language.

What did we find?

Although we cannot publish the full report publicly, our findings and recommendations have been shared with ADASS and Leeds City Council. The aim is to help make adult social care services easier to navigate and more inclusive for all. Annie King Davies wrote the report.

We are grateful to our brilliant volunteers and other Healthwatch teams involved.