Mission Page: Quality Focus

Meeting the needs of individuals who have experienced severe and enduring mental health problems.

All staff should be aware of the importance of quality standards, what those standards are and how to improve in reaching them. All staff should strive for quality outcomes. However, quality assurance is a measurement tool not an end in itself.

Quality improvement requires that development of both Bolton Employment Support Team and its staff, is the benchmark for meaningful improvement. This process begins with effective recruitment and selection that matches BEST’s development agenda/principles to the quality of candidates available for recruitment (revised job descriptions). The process continues through rigorous induction and again through staff training and development (determined in line with organisational growth). IPDRs (PDPs) are crucial to this as providing the substance of assessment/self-assessment, planning, development action, monitoring and review. The same is true of the annual Service Action Plan.

There needs to be a dual focus on organisational goals/tasks and staff engagement with them. It is important to (at least annually and possibly six-monthly) review policies, procedures, strategies and to identify/analyse key activities of BEST and whether working practice remains in line with demographics. Any research in this regard should be local as well as national and the input of the client group in terms of hands on involvement, feedback and consultation is required to ensure BEST is a responsive and representative service. Meaningful mechanisms should be in place to ensure this. This work should inform (and be informed by) the SAP (Service Action Plan).

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Our aim is to maximise quality in all of our processes and systems so as to deliver quality consistently. Each of our key organisational activities will be clearly outlined and updated annually. Every area will have clearly designated training outlines and will be covered in all inductions of staff and placement trainees. All our processes will be measured through accrued benefits to the users of our service – benefits measured in terms of positive enhancements to their quality of life/increased life opportunities.

BEST encourages and aims regularly to seek feedback from users of the service, employers, staff and other relevant
parties (stakeholders) through service assessment forms, review sheets, user groups (BUG), complaints and
compliments. All such feedback will enter the quality
improvement cycle, and become “what have we learned?” drivers for ongoing improvements.

BEST needs to establish the principles that underlie its
quality improvement drivers. It is committed to:

1. bLearn from others,
2. cListen to service users and employers,
3. cConstant evolution to meet the needs of the client base
4. cImproving staff in areas of skills and performance.

It also needs to establish the mechanisms (with clarity) that will translate the drivers into practice.

The annual quality cycle should include:

1. cAnnual worker review – that includes scrutiny of bbb bbb bbb bb roles/responsibilities, self-scoring and self-assessment (QRD),bb b nsecuring quality feedback and being shown how to improve
2. cSAP
3. cPDPs
4. cA twice yearly team meeting should be quality driven in terms of
a) cIdentifying/sharing good practice and useful resources and
b) cIdentifying new and relevant training for the roles
5) cAnnual service review (culmination of all year’s findings). Areas cc vfor improvement, Best Practice and development will be ccccc cm assessed. The team will subsequently produce an annual mmb bbbself-assessment. (incorporating what have we learned? drivers)
6) bAll BEST’s systems and processes that comprise its
bm functionality will be set out in writing and all staff from induction bm onwards will be trained and refreshed (at least annually) in these.