An Introduction

It is essential that all of the organisations that make up Children Matter East have systems, processes and day to day working arrangements that promote high quality services for children, young people and families. In ensuring that this is the case, most VCS organisations have in place a recognised quality assurance scheme.

While the nature of the quality assurance schemes used will vary, there are a number of principles and features that will be consistent to all:

• Quality assurance will be seen as the responsibility of everyone in the organisation.
  
  
• The scheme will contain a number of identified ‘quality standards' which the organisation has agreed to adopt and adhere to. These will express the service standards that customers and other stakeholders can expect from the organisation.
  
  
• The scheme will contain a cycle of documented activities for monitoring, evaluating and reviewing service delivery, over a period of time, to enable corrective action to be taken in ensuring continuous service improvement.
  
  
• Qualitative and quantitative measures and targets will be set to enable important aspects of service performance to be assessed and outputs and outcomes to be identified.
  
  
• The approach to quality will be underpinned by good management and the professional training and development of all staff.