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CHCIC501A: Manage children’s services workplace practice to address regulations and quality assurance

Facilitate an organisation self-evaluation process

Contents

Facilitate an organisation self-evaluation process, and coordinate the organisation for an external evaluation 3

Informing and involving families and gathering feedback 5

Completing required documentation 8

Collecting evidence 10

Topic review 11

2 Diploma of Children’s Services: CHCIC501A: Reader LO 9345 © NSW DET 2010

Facilitate an organisation self-evaluation process, and coordinate the organisation for an external evaluation

A part of maintaining the ability to provide quality care for children is the ability to regularly reflect on and evaluate current practice. The process of participating in the QIAS provides a wonderful opportunity for child care professionals to do just that, with the added bonus of determining areas that may benefit from further training or development.

You have already read that staff are required to do surveys to be used in Step 4, Moderation. However since these surveys are only sent out to centres after the self-study report has been completed and received by the NCAC, how are they going to help you? What happens if you think all of your staff are happy with particular aspects of the centre only to find out that someone has a concern or complaint? It’s too late to make changes, and as you have seen, the surveys completed by staff contribute 10% towards the accreditation decision. Consequently you need to have this information before you fill in your self-study report. In this way you can either ‘fix’ any issues, or at least include strategies to improve current practice in your Continuing Improvement Plan.

The obvious solution to this is to ensure that you give staff the opportunity to participate in a survey well in advance. In fact, offering surveys twice a year offers the following advantages;

• the responses will allow you to honestly reflect on current practice, areas requiring improvement and areas that could benefit from modification

• there won’t be any nasty surprises at the time of the ‘official’ surveys• staff will see that you are genuinely interested in their feedback and

involvement• staff (and families if you make them aware of this) will see that you are

sincere in your efforts to continuously provide a quality service

Many centres like to send out surveys part way into the year to receive feedback on ‘start of year’ issues such as settling children in to the centre and the orientation and enrolment processes, and then again towards the end of the year to gain families perspectives on the many other of day-to-day operations. While

Diploma of Children’s Services: CHCIC501A: Reader LO 9345 3© NSW DET 2010

family surveys are no longer required for the accreditation process, their feedback will often shape the views of staff working in the centre. A well written survey can give valuable feedback, as well as a starting point for centres to continuously improve upon practices.

Likewise, the staff (including management) should be given the opportunity to provide regular feedback. While this may happen during staff appraisals or staff meetings, anonymous staff surveys can be a good way of identifying any possible conflicts or concerns that for whatever reasons have not previously been raised.

Another way of receiving feedback is to offer surveys to casual staff and students. Since they are quite possibly coming into the centre with a recent history of involvement in other centres, they can often give feedback from an entirely different and fresh perspective. Likewise, you may like to give ‘work experience’ high school students a simple survey to complete on their last day. Due to them being younger, they can probably add an entirely different perspective on practises and operations—even if it’s only asking them if they think the children appear happy!

For further reading on this topic you may like to go to the NCAC website and look at Quality Companion: Reflecting on and Evaluating Practice


Informing and involving families and gathering feedback

‘Child Care Quality Assurance is a collaborative process. It involves families, child care professionals, the local community and, where appropriate, children who work together to improve and maintain the service’s quality practices.’

NCAC (2009) Quality Companion: Encouraging Family Participation, Australian Government

This statement best sums up the importance of informing and involving stakeholders in not only the QIAS process, but the everyday operations of the centre. Since we have just talked about involving staff and management, we are going to focus here on families.

We know that all centres have ‘different’ levels of involvement from families. These levels can be divided into three recognisable categories, with possibly the awareness that some families may fit in somewhere in between.

Category 1: These are the families who want to be involved in everything, and diligently attend every possible family and parent function and are happy to chat for hours at pickup time. Fortunately most centres have some of these families!

Category 2: are the ones who would like to be more involved but simply don’t have time due to family and work commitments. Sometimes these families will do what they can ‘behind the scenes’, but rarely have the time or energy to attend actual functions.

Category 3: These are the ones who don’t feel the need to become involved—providing they believe we’re doing a good job and their child is happy! While we should take it as a compliment that these families have such faith in us, it can sometimes be a bit disheartening when you’re trying to organise functions and know that it will just be the same few families attending.

So how can we inform families of what we are trying to achieve, and invite their involvement and participation? The first step in informing families of the QIAS should preferably start at the time of enrolment or orientation. Families can be given information outlining the accreditation process and an overview of how it is implemented in the centre. This information package could also outline how they can become involved if they wish. With this basic knowledge they are better prepared to understand any subsequent information that is given to them, and


hopefully not quite as inclined to disregard it because they don’t know what it’s about (including returning any centre surveys)!

Once families have that basic understanding they will usually develop an interest in what’s happening, even if only because they realise that the goal is to achieve better quality outcomes for their child! With the foundations now in place, it’s time to make sure we keep families regularly updated. It can be a good idea to use a variety of communication strategies since what works for one family doesn’t necessarily work for another. Some forms of communication could be;

• a regular section in the centre’s newsletter to advise families of the area the centre is currently focusing on—this could be from the self-study or the continuing improvement plan

• posters on the noticeboard or a dedicated noticeboard for the latest accreditation news (as per newsletter)

• emailing the accreditation information from newsletters (or the whole newsletter) to families who prefer this method

I’m sure you can think of many other ways to communicate the information to families—the main priority is that it is actually communicated to them.

Our next task is to actively encourage involvement. While all of the above strategies provide a method of distributing information, we need to look at how to receive feedback. Some ideas for this could be;

• Inviting parents to particular meetings—for example, meetings regarding accreditation, policy development and amendment or proposed changes.

• Encouraging informal verbal feedback—this may take place during drop-off or pick-up time. It’s not a bad idea to have a book where staff can write down any verbal feedback given, since this ensures that all staff have the opportunity to see what’s being said in an informal situation!

• Providing a suggestion and complaints/grievances box—suggestions and complaints should be taken seriously. Even if you believe a parent doesn’t have grounds to complain, you must look into the reasons that they have. Something must be wrong, so this is your opportunity to make improvements, even if it is only improvements to communication.

• Busy parents could be given a centre email address and encouraged to email feedback.

• Distributing family surveys as mentioned above. • Holding parent information evenings on aspects their children’s care and

education—these are not only a great time to ‘educate’ parents, but a great time to get to know parents and receive verbal feedback in a more relaxed setting.

• Holding family functions such as Teddy Bear Picnics or Easter parades—once again these are a great way to get informal feedback in a fun setting.


Since the surveys already mentioned may or may not explicitly cover the feedback you would like prior to writing the self-study report, it is always a good idea to design a survey to use in the time leading up to writing up the self-study. This can be done by using each principle to formulate a question or two in order to get an overview of what families think of your centre’s care and practises.

Activity 1

Other resourcesThe NCAC also has resources available that you can purchase to aid in informing and communicating with families. These are;

• The QA Communication Poster whiteboard—as the name implies this is a whiteboard that shows the 5 steps of accreditation plus has a whiteboard space for you to write messages to the parents.

• The Quality LDC Poster set is a set of 14 A3 sized posters suitable for classrooms or the entry that address quality practices. These help to communicate to families what it is that is considered ‘quality’.


Completing required documentation

Since we have already covered the various application forms and other required documentation in other sections of this unit, there remains only a few tips in regards to this subject. While the following points may seem fairly obvious, you would probably be amazed at how many documents are returned (and not only for accreditation and licensing) because something has been incorrect!

Make sure you read any instructions or guides for filling out forms. It seems to be human nature for people to only look at instructions or guides if they can’t work things out for themselves, and quite often their interpretation of what they think is required can be incorrect! It is therefore important to read any available instructions or guides, since as well as giving you information on how to fill the forms out, they may give instructions on other aspects such as:

• The colour of pen to use—black or blue is the required legal colour but with such an array of coloured pens to choose from, many people will automatically fill out a form with their favourite colour.

• The style of lettering required—most will state block letters (uppercase letters) since it is so much easier to read. If boxes are provided, write each letter clearly in a box. Perhaps the most important thing here is that your hand writing is eligible.

• How to present the documents—stapled, paper clip etc? Note that most will ask that you do NOT submit forms or documents in plastic sleeves.

• What supporting documents should be included—make a list if one is not provided so that you don’t forget anything.

• Which documents need to be certified (signed by a Justice of the Peace to verify that it is a true and accurate copy of the original).

If you are required to send a written statement use the following tips:

• Use a standard font (eg Times New Roman or Arial) in a standard size (usually 12pt). This point is especially valid if you are emailing the document—on many occasions I have received work from students that opened on my computer as a page of boxes and squiggles because they had used a ‘fancy’ font that I didn’t have installed!

• Use 1.15 or 1.5 line spacing unless asked to do otherwise. This makes the document so much easier to read, not to mention looking so much more professional.


• Use page numbers—this is the easiest and quickest way for the recipient to know that he/she has received everything. This point is especially valid if you are faxing documents.

• Use a header or footer containing your name and the title of the document or statement you are sending. This is not only more professional, but can avoid problems if the document is emailed as an attachment. Several times I have printed out multiple students’ work only to find that their name wasn’t on it and I had to go back into my emails and open all of the attachments to work out whose was whose!

Activity 2

Below I have made a short list of the most frequent reasons forms and applications are returned to the sender. Use this as a guide of what NOT to do.

• incorrect form used for the intended purpose• compulsory fields in a form not filled in• required support documents not included• required copies of certificates or documents not certified• attached certificates (such as first aid) are out of date• references (if required) are irrelevant, undated or do not give the required

specific details.

In addition, there are some things that can make the recipient a little cranky! These include;

• forms not being presented in an explicitly requested order• attaching unnecessary documents• statements or cover letters being written on torn-off scraps of paper • not following instructions—some common examples would be• attaching personal references when professional references have been

requested• attaching references when the application requested details of referees,

or alternatively,• providing the names of referees when written references have been

requested.

Hopefully this will give you a better insight into what to do and not do when completing and sending application and documents.

There are two final aspects regarding documents that should be remembered. The first is that you must keep a copy of all documents you have sent, just in case something goes wrong and they are lost, which leads us to the second point. Always use a ‘traceable’ mail system. The preference would be for certified or registered mail, but an alternative could be an Express Post envelope, which has a reference tag that you keep and can consequently track if necessary. Both DoCS and the NCAC will notify you of the receipt of your ‘packages’ so if you haven’t


received this within the anticipated time frame, don’t make assumptions—follow it up!

Collecting evidenceWhile records and documents and many aspects of practises and centre operations can be observed or inspected by an external assessor or validator (see Step 3. Validation), there will also be many claims you make in your self-study report that will require you to provide evidence. As you write your comments into the Self-Study Report, it’s a good idea to make up a checklist of aspects that you will need to ‘prove’ to the validator. For example, if you state that you hold regular parent evenings or family functions, it is very unlikely that one of these will fall on the day or days of your validation visit. Therefore you need to think about ways of verifying what you are claiming.

Activity 3

We have already looked at the various records and documents that are required to be kept and maintained. These documents should be readily accessible, while still adhering to any confidentiality requirements. In the section Documentation in another topic we will look at how to organise records and documents in preparation for external assessment.


Topic review

Go through this summary of key points to check your understanding;

Do you know how to carry out a service self evaluation/assessment?

Do you have some ideas for informing and involving families?

Do you have some ideas for inviting feedback from families?

Do you have an understanding of the importance of correctly completing documentation and how to go about it?

Do you have an understanding of the importance of collecting evidence and how to go about it?

If you cannot answer these questions you can:

• Go over this unit again.• Talk to your teacher about these questions.• Discuss some of these ideas with an experienced child care worker.


clips word template - tafe nsw€¦ · web viewdue to them being younger, they can probably add an...

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