Rising from the roots of its community, Friends of Bright Eyes (FOBE) has grown to become a well recognised charity, offering a multiplicity of services to those in the community most in need. With its continuous growth, the staff at FOBE work hard towards achieving high levels of quality throughout the organisation.

What is PQASSO?
 

PQASSO is a practical quality assurance system developed by the Charities Evaluation Services, designed specifically for voluntary organisations like FOBE, so that we can take a thorough, step-by-step look at the strengths of our organisation and identify areas of improvement. It covers twelve key areas for assessment; planning for quality, governance, management, user-centred service, staff and volunteers, training and development, managing money, managing resources, managing activities, networking and partnership, monitoring and evaluation and results. Each area has three “levels of achievement” accompanied with “suggested evidence”. As PQASSO is a self-assessment pack, it is left upon members of the organisation take all the necessary action ensure the organisation meets the level of achievement currently being worked towards. Once one level has been achieved, the organisation starts working towards the next level.

FOBE & the PQASSO Quality Assurance System

Maintaining the quality of its services to its users has always been at the forefront of FOBE’s ethos. Using the PQASSO quality assurance system, FOBE hopes to focus on recognising the organisation’s strength’s and identifying areas for improvement. FOBE expects that PQASSO will help the organisation prioritise, clarify organisational roles and aid team building and structural improvements to help the organisation provide a more efficient and overall better quality service to its users. Through implementation of the PQASSO system, FOBE hopes to achieve a number of goals, including improving its working practices and policies, improving the relationship between staff, volunteers and users and encouraging the further involvement of users in the charity.

At present FOBE staff feel that the organisation is currently at level one of the PQASSO quality assurance system; it is now a matter of collecting and documenting the evidence. Once this has been completed, the organisation will look towards what is necessary for achieving level two of the self-assessment pack.