QUALITY IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

WHAT IS QUALITY?

In everyday use ‘Quality’ is often used to indicate excellence of a product or service. However, excellence in itself is not important unless our customers, ie our children and their parents, value it. Most of us would agree that a Rolls Royce or a Mercedes car offers Quality, but what about my wee Astra or a Fiesta? They will never be able to provide all the features of the Rolls Royce. Does that mean that their producers can never aspire to Quality?

Those of us who were at the GPN Quality Conference on Thursday 18th October 2001 enjoyed Elizabeth Fieldings comparisons of the two lovely jackets she had brought along. One purchased on a recent holiday in America, which in itself was a nice jacket and served a purpose. The other, years old, which had been owned by her mother-in-law and would obviously last forever because of the amount of care, detail and thought that had gone into the ‘Quality’ of the garment, made with the customer in mind.

We all know only too well how much pressure there is on us as providers to improve the ‘Quality’ of our servers, yet sometimes we struggle with ‘well how do we do that.’ With this in mind The Dry Arch Centre’s Good Practice Network began a process of looking at ‘Quality’ through the eyes of perspective stakeholders.

Quality can be determined from five measurable perspectives. Otherwise known as the ‘Multiple Perspective Approach.’

These perspectives include:

1. The Top Down Perspective – As seen by the inspectorate
2. Bottom Up Perspective – Attempting to determine how a centre is actually experienced by our children.
3. Inside, Outside Perspective – As experienced by the families we serve.
4. Inside Perspective – As experienced by staff.
5. Outside Perspective – How the community and society perceive the centre or service.

We would ask you to consider that only when all 5 perspectives, i.e.

1. Inspectorate
2. Staff
3. Parents
4. Staff
5. Wider community/society

have been measured and considered together and safeguards set in place to ensure all 5 stakeholders are happy with the service, can we claim to have approached a quality to improve, and aspire to offer the best we can to the children we serve.