CAMPHILL HOUSES, Stourbridge - the West Midlands community of the Camphill Village Trust - is the first organisation in Britain to achieve certification under the international quality assurance programme Ways to Quality.
Members of the Camphill Houses community recently had the opportunity to welcome the Swiss originator of Ways to Quality, Udo Herrmannstorfer, and Rainer Menzel of the Basel-based auditing and certification body Confidentia, to celebrate the community's achievement.
Attaining quality assurance certification with Ways to Quality has been a three-year process for the Camphill Houses. It has involved the community's residents with special needs as well as the co-workers who support them in all aspects of their lives.
"It is increasingly important for us to be able to demonstrate to the authorities that we achieve the aims set out in our mission statement, " explained Eva Heathcock, a senior co-worker with Camphill Houses. "Ways to Quality allows us to do that and has helped us to adapt our structure and ways of working to ensure those in our community with special needs get the very best support.
"Our management system and ways of working are now well documented so that we can demonstrate the quality of service we provide to Social Services, Supporting People and other bodies which provide the funding for those with learning disabilities and oversee those who provide services to them."
Camphill Houses looked at a number of quality assurance schemes before deciding to be among the first in the UK to work with Ways to Quality. Other schemes were mostly aimed at manufacturing or service industries where the emphasis is on products. Because Camphill Houses works with people, it wanted a quality assurance process with a human dimension.
Udo Herrmannstorfer explained that Ways to Quality has been developed for charities and other not-for-profit organisations working with people. It doesn't provide fixed ways of working. Instead it helps those involved to gain the skills they need to create the organisation that meets their purpose.
Before achieving certification, two audits made of Camphill Houses. Auditor Steve Lyons said that the audits were designed to help with self assessment. "Our job was to help Camphill Houses to look at what they say they do, so that they can assess how well they do it."
Rather than having a relationship of service providers and service users, the co-workers and residents with special needs at Camphill Houses work in partnership. Those with learning disabilities are involved in the community's management groups to help shape the support provided to meet their needs. The Ways to Quality auditors commented in their report that "this, in our view, represents best practice and should be promoted as such with funding and regulatory bodies."
The award of the Ways to Quality certificate is only the start of the quality assurance process. Annual quality audits will assess the Camphill Houses community's on-going process of self-regulation in maintaining the high quality of services on offer to adults with learning disabilities.
Top picture: Carl Briggs (left) and Eva Heathcock of Camphill House proudly show their Ways to Quality certificate. With them (behind l. to r.) are Ways to Quality auditor Steve Lyons; Rainer Menzel from certification body Confidentia, Switzerland; and Ways to Quality founder Udo Herrmannstorfer.
Below: Members of the Camphill Houses community in Stourbridge celebrate achieving quality assurance certification with officials from Ways to Quality and Confidentia.
