The board of VAC had set the team a target to achieve various quality assurance standards; one of those standards was the accreditation for PQASSO produced by Charities Evaluation Services (CES) called Quality Mark. We achieved the Quality Mark (at level 2) in November 2010.

Groups that we work with are often interested to know what the accreditation experience is like for PQASSO so we have given a flavour of our experience in the details below

Why we wanted to achieve Quality Mark

• Have a credible quality assured system that demonstrated to external stakeholders our status as a quality organisation
• Stakeholders are usually familiar with PQASSO and appreciate the benefits of having the kite mark.

Completing the self assessment

It's not possible to put in an application for the Quality Mark until the self assessment and improvement actions has been followed through. This took us approximately a year.

The newest version of PQASSO (edition 3) is quite different to the previous version so it made sense to start our assessment work again. PQASSO edition 3 is more up to date with the current context that we all have to work within; in particular it is very outcomes focused.
We tried to make the task of evidence gathering and action planning easier by involving a number of people in the organisation. This meant that the work could be shared but also that the assessment was inclusive so that improvements could be felt throughout the organisation.

Managing our evidence

Implementing PQASSO at level 2 does generate a lot of evidence as well as actions so having an effective system in place to manage this is important.

We purchased the PQASSO CD rom from CES which is a database system, inputting into the CD rom is time consuming however we did find that this was an investment of time worth making.
We are a medium sized established organisation so inevitably we have many policies, procedures and processes in place to keep the organisation running effectively so we needed a database to support our implementation work.

The Quality Mark application process

The stages in the process are clearly explained in an information leaflet which is downloadable from the CES website together with all the relevant forms and guidance notes.

Process timeline:-

• Application submitted in June 2010 to CES and two review officers were allocated our application one of whom was described as the lead officer

• In mid August 2010 the lead review officer allocated our application made contact with VAC to agree a site visit date which we scheduled for early November 2010.

• In early October 2010 we submitted our ‘desktop' review information and the review officers conducted their desktop review upon receipt of this.

• In early October 2010 we were also alerted to the range of people that the review officers wished to meet with so meeting times could be arranged in advance.

• On 10th and 11th November our site visit took place and two review officers were with us for both days.

The site visits

The officers conducted a number of pre arranged meetings with the identified personnel as well as extensive on site review work; the latter consisted of ‘checking' that we had the evidence that we said we had and working through various queries.

Meetings took place with 2 senior officers including the chief executive, the personnel officer, two trustees (including extensive meetings with the chair), 4 project lead workers and 2 volunteers. The meetings with each lasted a minimum of 45 minutes.

At the end of the second day of the site visit the review officers met again with the chief executive and the chair to provide feedback and at this point they stated that they would recommend that we should be awarded the quality mark at level 2.

They did not require us to implement an improvement plan however they did highlight areas where they felt we could make some changes for continuous improvement.

We received written confirmation that we had been awarded the quality mark a few weeks later and were sent the kitemark to use a short time later!