The Consumer Audit was set up in 1997 to develop a method by which consumers (users and carers) could have real and direct influence on the quality of community care services, supporting the development of needs-led, rather than resource-led, services. Southampton Centre for Independent Living (SCIL) manages Consumer Audit.

Consumer Audit trains disabled people to evaluate community care services for disabled people. We believe that consumers (users and carers) are the experts on the effectiveness of services.

Consumer Audit approaches the assessment of services in a new and radical way, by focusing on the outcomes and impact of services on users and carers (family and friends).

With our training auditors help consumers identify key areas of concern about the services they use.

Consumers have valuable experience and expertise that can be used to improve and focus services

We audit services to see what difference they make in key areas of people’s lives. These include:

Consumer Audit provides valuable information on the achievements and differences that services make to people’s lives, reported by consumers from the viewpoint of consumer experience.

This can be used to inform commissioning, purchasing and delivery of community care services to ensure needs-led, rather than resource-led, services, for the individual, not the system.

Consumer Audit is based on the social model of disability  barriers are created by society rather than by a person’s impairment.

We want to provide a ‘grass roots’ view that examines services from a largely unexplored viewpoint - that of the consumer. We want to establish the consumer as the expert on the effect of services. Our assessments aim to highlight not the system but the person, increasing awareness of the impact of services on individuals.

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