Projects - Quality Standards Work

During Year 1 a survey was undertaken to determine the extent to which Third Sector frontline organisations use existing quality standards and what standards they would be interested in working on in the future.

DOWNLOAD the results of the Quality Questionnaire.

Some of the quality standards work will be ongoing.

• Young Suffolk will provide introductory training sessions for frontline organisations in association with the Local Infrastructure Partnerships, focussing on the Young Suffolk Lite Quality Standards. It will make available three training sessions each year.

It will also provide mentoring support for two Local Infrastructure Partners each year in order that a member of their staff can be trained to support an organisation through the Lite Quality Standard.

• SAVO will deliver a number of briefings across the county on the PQASSO quality standard and mentor a number of organisations to achieve level 1 or 2 during the lifetime of the project. One SAVO member of staff is a qualified PQASSO mentor and another is a qualified Peer Reviewer.

Other quality standards work in the 1st year:

• Suffolk Passport - There have been some initial discussions with local funders to ensure Third Sector organisations applying for grant funding are ‘fit for purpose’ in order to quality for a grant.

It is envisaged that a ‘Suffolk Passport’ could be held by Third Sector groups to instantly prove to funders that they have the appropriate policies and procedures in place and are working to a certain agreed standard.

A research project was carried out in Year 1 to determine the feasibility of this scheme, which could be rolled out for the County Council’s grant fund, the Suffolk Single Gateway. 'Suffolk Passport' Report.

Other quality standards briefings and information sessions will be held each year across the county and the survey in Year 1 will help to determine the programme for this in future years.

See the 'Quality Standards Guide' (produced by SAVO) which will also be updated through this project.

Target: 50 organisations mentored through relevant quality standards by the end of the project.

This project is managed by the Infrastructure Network Suffolk (formerly known as One Voice Suffolk), and is funded by the Big Lottery Fund