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Quality of Service

How does Ways to Quality Ensure the Quality of Service Provision

1. Stages of the Process of Service Provision

 

All services are embedded in a basic process that consists of three stages:

 

1.   The preparatory stage contains a picture of the situation and work on finding the reasons for what lead to it. The result is a continual work on the guiding vision for all those involved, which creates a common ground of understanding for individual action.

 

2.   The solution stage where decisions are reached and implemented by those responsible for the task on behalf of the community.

 

3.   The reflection stage includes review, giving account, feedback and relieving of the doers from their responsibility.

 

Embedding these three stages ensures that experiences remain available into the future. Self- and external evaluations as well as feedback from service recipients enable the service provision to develop according to changing needs; undesirable developments can be promptly recognised and adjusted.

 

The rhythm of these three phases of collaborative work in Ways to Quality takes the place of the continual improvement process used elsewhere.

2. Phases of the performance process

It is aimed to combine all performances into a basic three-part working rhythm.

 

  1. Embedded in the preparation phase is the picture of the present situation followed by work based on future orientation. This provides a basis for the Guiding Vision Statement, a mutual understanding for the individual’s task in hand.
  2. The solution phase as to how a decision is made and its implementation is the responsibility of the person setting up the task.
  3. The reflection phase (looking back to accountability, reflections) goes so far as being discharged.


The basic implementation of each function into such a rhythmic working procedure provides the guarantee that experiences made provide the participants not only with a qualitatively better potential to prove their capabilities, but it also helps to recognise wrong developments at an early stage which then can be corrected. The conscious gathering and observance of the feedback from patients, other people receiving help and external business partners who are subjected to such performances, gives rise to a continuous self-evaluation process. 

3. Training for Those Involved

In Europe, Ways to Quality offers a programme of continual further training for as many co-workers as possible. The broader the basis, the greater the efficacy over the whole organisation. The programme includes all the individual fields, as well as selected issues in an organisation such as the guiding vision, dynamic delegation, collegial conversation, techniques for holding meetings, issues of self-management, contractual issues, and so on.

There are special courses for those responsible for quality development in an organisation. Please contact WtQ UK for information about WtQ courses available in the UK: link to contact details.

 

4. The Effectiveness of the System

The Ways to Quality system leads to regular observation of and dealing with the most significant factors influencing the performance and potential for development of an organisation. The system does not prescribe particular organisational forms or courses of action; instead it presents perspectives and criteria which reveal what needs doing in the way of conscious forming of the work in an organisation and enables the setting of corresponding priorities.

 

Ways to Quality actively includes both co-workers and service recipients in the initial phase of the service. This lessens the usual separation between supply and demand and its problems. This approach to collaborative working stimulates and enhances not only the co-workers' sense of meaning and thus their motivation, but also the co-responsibility of all concerned. This feeling of shared responsibility is the precondition, for instance, for developing favourable solutions for current issues of service provision and financial enabling.

 

Since it cannot everywhere be assumed that all those involved already have the necessary understanding and demeanour, it is important for the whole organisation consciously to encourage and promote this. Taking such deficiencies for granted would mean accepting indifference and a passive attitude of entitlement as the starting point; this would trigger a flood of regulations and permanently prevent either the development of competence or of the qualities that were lacking. Ways to Quality seeks to strengthen those involved by working with them, rather than weaken them through over-regulation.

 

It is foreseen that organisations will be periodically audited according to the perspectives afforded by Ways to Quality whether voluntarily or, as in many cases, compulsorily. Appropriate forms of auditing have been developed and are being practised; an appropriate and comprehensive training for auditors has been developed and is in place. In many cases diagnostic audits have been utilised in order better and more promptly to ascertain any shortcomings in organisation development, and set corresponding priorities.