Overview

When a large multi-site care home provider wanted a clearer, more consistent picture of quality, it commissioned TLF Research to undertake a comprehensive satisfaction and engagement programme across its entire portfolio of over 100 homes. The goal was a measurable approach that would generate actionable insight at both home and group level - while also providing robust evidence to support CQC inspections and wider governance requirements.

The programme spanned three stakeholder groups: residents, relatives, and staff - ensuring that the organisation could understand quality of care from every perspective simultaneously.

The Programme

The full programme encompassed resident, relative and staff surveys; home-level and group-level reporting; live access to results via a secure online portal; and executive-level presentations with tailored recommendations and action planning.

Where consent was provided, surveys were uniquely linked to individual respondents. This enabled the organisation to investigate concerns at an individual level when required, while preserving the overall confidentiality and trust essential to achieving honest, meaningful responses.

Survey Approach

Residents were surveyed using paper questionnaires distributed directly to each home in batches. This allowed staff to facilitate participation appropriately, while ensuring a confidential and consistent process across all locations. Residents could be assisted by a relative or friend, and completed surveys were returned directly to TLF Research via a prepaid Freepost envelope - removing any potential for bias in the collection process.

Relatives were surveyed by post and online. Postal packs included QR codes enabling digital completion, increasing convenience and improving response rates without requiring all participants to be online.

Staff surveys were conducted online and completely anonymously, running alongside the resident and relative feedback collection. They explored a broad range of workforce themes including job satisfaction, support from management, training and development, communication, teamwork, staffing pressures, confidence in care delivery, and loyalty to both the home and the wider sector.

What We Measured

Carefully designed questionnaires gathered meaningful insight across a wide range of themes - without creating survey fatigue. Topics included:

• Care and support

• Health and wellbeing

• Activities and social engagement

• Communication with families

• Dignity and respect

• The home environment

• Food and dining experience

• Access to healthcare services

• Safety and responsiveness

• Overall satisfaction and likelihood to recommend

Reporting and Insight

Resident and relative results were delivered through a secure online portal, updated daily, giving the client real-time visibility of the programme as it unfolded. The portal enabled the organisation to track live response rates, compare homes against group averages, segment results by location and respondent type, identify high-performing and underperforming areas, and review trends over time.

Alongside the live portal, a detailed offline report was produced and presented to senior leadership. This included executive summaries, home-by-home analysis, key driver analysis, verbatim feedback themes, priority recommendations, and action-focused improvement plans - giving leadership both the strategic overview and the operational detail needed to act with confidence.

Outcomes

The programme gave the provider a clear, evidence-based understanding of operational strengths and areas requiring attention across its entire estate. Several homes drew directly on the findings during CQC inspections, particularly around responsiveness, resident wellbeing, family communication and people's lived experience.

At a group level, the organisation was able to improve family communication processes, increase activity provision in a number of homes, identify staff morale issues at an early stage, share best practice between sites, and develop targeted improvement plans grounded in evidence rather than assumption.

The client has since embedded the survey programme as a permanent component of its quality assurance and governance framework - a meaningful signal of the programme's value and the confidence it has built across the organisation.