Hampshire Autistic Society - Quality Assurance

As part of our strategic development, Hampshire Autistic Society has taken the decision to commit to a nationally recognised quality audit and service development system to help support the development of our adult services. The process we chose to be engaging in was called Autism Quality Networks. The Quality Networks system has been around for a while in learning disability services and this knowledge and experience has been developed to facilitate services for people within the autistic spectrum.

The Quality Network is a partnership between the British Institute of Learning Disabilities (BILD) and the National Development Team (NDT). The Autism Quality Network was developed as a part of Quality Network to work specifically with people with autism, family members, providers and commissioners. It helps service providers to look at what life is like for the people who use them and how they can improve their services. It works with organisations to help carry out a 'guided self review', which draws out key themes that need attention, and then works with the organisation to create an action plan. The Autism Quality Network uses simple but powerful ways to look at quality. People find out about quality by visiting and spending time with people who use services. This puts the focus directly on what happens day to day in people’s lives. This means that no one is excluded by their disability - there are no interview questions to answer, or questionnaires to fill in.

The idea is to take a step back and look at the services we provide by getting alongside people who use the service to find out what their life is really like. The review is based on spending a lot of time with people to look at their lives in relation to the following 10 outcome statements:

Roger Blunden of Autism Quality Networks was our Quality Coach. He has an extensive background in working with people with learning disabilities, which includes a lot of experience of working with people with autism. Cathy Read co-ordinated the review and she will circulate the names of the review team members as soon as this has been confirmed. The process involves the review team members in attending four workshops over a twelve-month period.

After workshop one, each review team member is linked to a specific service user who they will arrange to visit four times over the next four weeks to find out what life is really like for them. The review team meet up for a second workshop where each review team member feeds back what they have found out about the person’s life in relation to the ten outcomes. At this workshop, themes begin to emerge about where the organisation is delivering the outcomes and where improvement is needed.

About a month later, a third workshop then takes place to formulate an action plan based on what has emerged at the second workshop. A fourth workshop takes place six months after workshop 3. This gives the review team the chance to monitor progress of the action plan. People who were visited after workshop one are revisited to see what impact the action plan has had on their lives.