CQL’s Quality Measures 2005® is a comprehensive resource on multiple dimensions of quality assessment and enhancement. It builds on the foundations of past standards and moves human service providers forward into the current environment.
Quality Measures 2005® combines CQL’s personal outcomes approach to quality definition and measurement with the lessons of social capital and the growing importance of community as the context for quality.
Quality Measures 2005® contains five sections including: Shared Values, Basic Assurances®, Responsive Services®, Personal Outcome Measures®, and Community Life®. These measures form the basis for the CQL Accreditation process.
Shared Values identifies the values that shape the way we define, measure, and elicit feedback about quality of life and quality of services. Organizational values drive organizational behavior. Ethical practices reflect a service provider with sound values. Leadership practices, management decisions, organizational priorities and the character of the workforce are influenced by organizational values. Just as individual behaviors are driven by our internal belief systems or values, our collective values guide our organizational behavior and shape our organizational culture.
Basic Assurances® details the essential, fundamental and non-negotiable requirements for all service and support providers. These include an emphasis on rights and responsibilities, health and safety as well as the areas or risk management and financial oversight. CQL’s Basic Assurances® require more than compliance with licensing and certification standards. Basic Assurances® looks at the provision of safeguards from the person’s perspective. While the Basic Assurances® contain requirements for certain systems and policies and procedures, the effectiveness of the system or the policy is determined in practice, person by person.
Personal Outcome Measures® 2005 Edition focuses on the choices people have in their lives, which serve as a powerful tool for evaluating the quality of life for people and the degree to which the Service Provider individualizes supports to facilitate outcomes. People define outcomes for themselves. The outcomes are non-prescriptive; they have no norms. Each person is a unique sample of one. The meaning and definition of personal outcome items will vary from person to person. CQL measures the presence of the outcome as defined by each person. Personal Outcome Measures® are available for adults, children and youth, and families with young children.
Responsive Services® address the question of how the Service Provider provides Basic Assurances®, builds social capital, contributes to Community Life® and facilitates personal outcomes. Responsive Services® broaden the definition of quality to include responsiveness to people served rather than a single criterion of compliance with standards and organizational processes.
Community Life® fosters the bridging role of service providers in building social capital for people, connecting them with other people and resources in the community and defining quality in the context of the community rather than that of the program or service.