Big thanks!

In my previous blog I announced that I had launched a survey aimed at people who have, or care for, children and use educational, recreational or wellbeing services in Letchworth. Whilst many people have done the survey online from home, some people may have seen and spoken to me out and about in Letchworth.

I was invited in to attend several classes run by the Children’s Centres and have spoken to parents and carers at both Standalone Farm and before stage shows at the Broadway Cinema and Theatre. I also know that some group leaders have got their participants to do the survey by making it part of their own classes and groups.

We really have tried to get the survey out there as much as possible and in total we have so far received over 200 responses! On Monday, we conducted the random prize draw that went along with the survey and the winners of the three prizes have been contacted by email. Congratulations to those winners and, most importantly, I’d like to say a massive thank you to everyone who responded, your feedback is really valuable to us. Although the prize draw is now over, the survey itself is still live and I would encourage people to still leave their responses – the survey can be found here.

Looking ahead, over the next couple of weeks I will look to analyse the data that I have gathered from your responses and will aim to feed this back to the providers of services in Letchworth. This will hopefully allow them to understand how people are accessing services in Letchworth, where improvement is needed and where there are gaps in services provided for families. Eventually I will produce feedback for the users of services, the parents and carers, so that they’re able to see what others were saying about services in Letchworth.

Some of the key findings so far are that:

  • Over 70% said they accessed information on groups/clubs through word of mouth. Only 42% said they found out the information online.
  • Just 39% of respondents said they use services at one of the three Children’s Centres in Letchworth.
  • Letchworth scored an average of 8.7 out of 10 in response to the statement ‘Letchworth is a good place to raise children’.
  • 81% of people used the free recreational facilities in Letchworth (parks, splash park, Greenway, etc.) at least once a week. The main reason given for using these places was that they were cheap or free to use.

Thank you again for your contributions to the survey and keep an eye on this blog for further updates on the feedback from the survey responses.