Transcript Quality Mark - Think Local Act Personal

An Approach to quality:
The Quality Mark
Helen Allen
Operations Manager
26th September
What is Community Catalysts?
 Was launched by and works in partnership with NAAPS
UK, the charity representing small community services
 Aims to make sure that people wherever they live have
real choice of great local social care and health services
 Works to harness the talents of people and communities
to provide high quality small scale and local support
services.
Putting People in control of their own
services?
 Government commitment to extending personal care and
personal health budgets
 People buy support and services that help them to live
their lives
 Giving people control of the money is only half the answer
 People need real choice of a wide range of great local
services and supports – and not just social care and
health services
The challenge facing local authorities
Local authorities:
 Are committed to achieving good outcomes for people
but have to make significant savings
 Need to be able to think and commission imaginatively to
achieve ‘more for less’ (not ‘less for less’)
 Need a wide range of local services that can help people
make their money go further and build social capital
 Need to know that these services are safe and of high
quality
Quality issues
There are a number of established approaches to
quality assuring social care providers such as:
CQC regulation
Tendering criteria
Contract compliance
Approved provider lists
But are these approaches effective and how do
they fit with personalisation? New systems and
approaches are emerging to answer these
questions
Micro providers
 Are local people providing support and services to other
local people
 Work on a very small scale (5 or fewer workers – paid or
unpaid)
 Are independent of any larger organisation
Background to the Quality Mark
 Community Catalysts are now supporting a number of
organisations to work with micro services in their region.
 The majority of micro (and other? ) providers fall outside
current regulatory and legislative frameworks for care
and support services
 The cannot register with the CQC because they do not
provide personal care OR do so out of a residential
setting
 In many areas they often cannot become an approved
provider because the list is closed or they are not a
traditional care provider or because the process is
inaccessible to them
Quality Mark
To tackle these issues Community Catalysts
have developed and tested a Quality Mark for
micro social care enterprise; the approach
 Allows providers to demonstrate their quality
continuously improve and have a competitive
advantage
 Enables customers to judge safety and quality
 Is simple, cheap and easy to use for allproportional to the type of activity
The Quality Mark approach
Stage one - Preparation
Stage two – Gateway assessment of the provider’s
systems and paper documentation. Evidence presented
to independent panel including carer/customer who
recommend whether the provider gains a silver quality
mark
Stage three - People recognises that all the paperwork and
systems in the world do not guarantee that the service
will deliver good outcomes for customers. Uses simple
feedback systems to allow service users to say what
they think about the service and other users/carers to
become a mystery shopper. The panel recommends if
the provider is able to gain a gold quality mark
Piloting the Quality Mark
 Piloted in Oldham- developed with a senior officer in
procurement, Quality Assurance officer, safeguarding
representative, a customer, a carer and 2 providers
 Worked with four providers through the Preparation and
Gateway stages
 Worked with two providers through the People stage
 Three more providers identified to work through the
Preparation and Gateway stages
 The results published in an addendum to Practical Guide
 All the providers that have been through the process are
really positive about its benefits
 People who need care and support are also very positive
Choice, Support and Transport (CST)
CST offers day opportunities for people with a learning
disability. Motivated to engage with the Quality Mark pilot
because they believed it would enable them to improve
their systems.
Mark and Keith from CST said they “Found the process
difficult at times a bit like Yoga – ‘difficult but stretches
you’” and “made them do tasks they had been putting
off....”
CST has introduced new feedback forms for customers
as a result of the Quality Marking process.
Mark says that CST “were little fish slipping through a
net and the QM caught them”
Sunshine Care
Sunshine Care is a cooperative and social enterprise which
provides care and support to older people in their own
homes. Is registered with CQC. Sunshine Care was
motivated to engage with the Quality Mark because they
hoped it would provide business opportunities and help
them to stand out from other similar providers.
On reflection Chris from Sunshine Care felt that the whole
process was “good and that they enjoyed it”
Chris also felt that gaining the silver award would enable
Sunshine Care “to demonstrate that they are a good
provider”
People who use services
A customer of Sunshine Care stated
that the Quality Mark system was
“invaluable as the process gives you
confidence in the providers”.
Summary
 Providers do not have to undertake the Quality Mark- but
the market advantages are obvious
 Providers need some level of appropriate support to
work through the Gateway stage.
 The process is intended to be accessible to a variety of
providers but also challenging
 There will be some standard evidence required from all
providers but each provider needs to be assessed
proportionately to their activity
 The panel has a supportive role to make suitable
recommendations to the provider to continually improve
their service.
For more information
Contact Helen Allen
[email protected]