The Social Services transformation programme aims to promote integration and consistency across all Services, increase efficiency in the use of resources, increase independence and manage risk. The creation of a new Quality Standards service brought together existing teams within children’s and adult’s services, with a view to develop a Centre of Excellence in Quality Standards; to further embed a culture of continuous improvement within the Service, Council and external provider agencies, and with an emphasis on raising safeguarding knowledge, practice quality and thus improving outcomes for service users.
Once the Quality Standards Service is fully established, a key step will be to provide a strategy and framework for quality standards processes and procedures.
What’s changed?
A key driver for change is the equity of standards for both adults and children’s services. As Childrens’ services undergo greater statutory scrutiny the quality assurance process has traditionally been more comprehensive than in Adults. This discrepancy will be addressed with the development of a quality assurance framework that will also consider key elements of the services, such as participation and workforce development and learning.
Another critical piece of work for the service will be the generation of internal quality assurance standards for each sub-service area and monitoring mechanisms to ensure feedback and improvement plans are shared and supported. The development of such processes and procedures improves quality for the social care sector as whole and ensures governance is robust and transparent.