All organisations that receive funding from the Department of Communities are required to deliver services of a quality consistent with the standards. All funded organisations are expected to have policies and procedures for services to clients consistent with those standards.
However, only organisations receiving more than $100,000 per year from the department as at 1 January 2008 are required to provide evidence of their implementation of the standards to the department through undertaking a self-assessment and developing an improvement plan. Over time, monitoring of the standards will become part of regular monitoring conducted by departmental Community Support Officers.
If your organisation is funded less than $100,000 triennially from the department you are not required to evidence achievement against the standards or conduct a self-assessment. However the department encourages your organisation to be aware of the standards and the requirements under them to ensure that your organisation is delivering a service consistent with the standards.
The standards aim to ensure that all services delivered through the community services sector in Queensland meet at least a minimum level of safety, quality and accountability. The standards outline what an organisation is expected to do when it is functioning well and focuses organisations on improving quality, which benefits the clients and strengthens the organisation and the non-government sector more broadly.
All organisations receiving more than $100,000 per annum in triennial funding from the Department of Communities will have their compliance with the standards monitored from 2011 onwards. In preparation for this, these organisations must conduct a self-assessment and develop an improvement plan by 2 March 2009. The only exceptions to this requirement are licensed childcare organisations and organisations recognised by the department as successfully achieving within another equivalent quality system.
It is expected that any organisations that newly fall into this category after 1 January 2008, either through new or increased funding, will already be able to meet the standards. These organisations are encouraged but not required to undertake a self-assessment.
Organisations receiving less than $100,000 per annum in triennial funding are expected to implement the standards also. However they are not required to undertake a self-assessment or develop an improvement plan, although organisations receiving over $50,000 are encouraged to do so.
Your organisation is still expected to have processes and systems consistent with the standards. However, it is not necessary for you to undertake a self-assessment or develop an improvement plan, even if your organisation is receiving more than $100,000 per annum in one-off funding.
A key consideration in any decision about new departmental funding will be the organisation’s capacity to meet the standards. Organisations receiving less than $100,000 that have not conducted a self-assessment will still be eligible for additional funding. However a self-assessment summary may be useful additional evidence to present to the department for its consideration when making funding decisions. It may therefore be advisable for organisations that anticipate expanding services through potential new funding opportunities to conduct a self-assessment.
Organisations funded over $100,000 are only required to conduct a self-assessment and develop an improvement plan once. The standards are intended to be a process of continuous improvement and organisations should be continually regularly assessing their internal policies, procedures and practices to ensure a high level of service delivery is maintained. Organisations may independently choose to continually self-assess and redevelop their improvement plans.
The Department of Communities funds a great variety of services, so there are some standards that do not apply to some service types.
These will mainly be organisations that are funded to provide resources to the community or to other organisations but do not provide services directly to clients, or only provide direct services in a very limited way. Such organisations may not need to have policies and procedures relating to direct service delivery (standards 1–6).
Similarly, many services funded for direct service delivery are not funded to provide community development or education services (see standard 2). The relevance of each requirement to your organisation needs to be separately assessed.
Some organisations have service agreements with the department that refer to other sets of standards, such as the Supported Accommodation Assistance Program Standards, and the Domestic and Family Violence Practice Standards for example.
These organisations are still required to deliver services consistent with these separate sets of practice standards. In future these standards may be reviewed in the light of the introduction of the Standards for Community Services.
Self-assessment is the systematic internal review of policies and procedures to determine the extent to which these meet the Standards for Community Services. Self-assessment enables an organisation to identify strengths, and areas for development which are the focus of an improvement plan.
There are four main types of evidence to gather and examine as part of the self-assessment process:
Conducting a self-assessment involves collecting, managing and assessing the first three forms of evidence for all areas of the standards (guiding documents, staff awareness and records).
For the fourth form of evidence (client feedback), a set of questions is included in the self-assessment workbook that will be distributed to all funded organisations. This can be adapted by organisations for seeking feedback from clients.
You will need a copy of the self-assessment resource kit. The kit will include:
A self-assessment kit (or kits) has been sent to your organisation in late April 2008. Copies of the documents in the kit are also on Community Door. Further hard copy versions of the self-assessment kits are available through contacting Sector Development on 3405 6744.
You will also need:
If you require a CD copy of the access runtime exe program contact standards.team@communities.qld.gov.au
A self-assessment summary report needs to be provided to the department by 2 March 2009. The self-assessment can be time-consuming, so it is advisable for organisations to commence planning for it as soon as possible. Part B of the self-assessment manual has guidance about steps to take to set up the self-assessment process.
Key first steps include the management committee appointing someone to lead the self-assessment project, create a schedule of activities and appointing a ‘quality team’ to carry out the self-assessment.
Organisations are required to submit a summary report of their self-assessment to the Department of Communities by 2 March 2009. Organisations that conduct the self-assessment using the hard copy of the workbook will be able to use the electronic tool to create a summary report.
Organisations that conduct their self-assessment using the electronic tool will be able to automatically generate a self-assessment summary. Instructions on how to generate and submit a self-assessment summary report are outlined in the self-assessment manual and the user-guide that comes with the electronic self-assessment tool.
Through the self-assessment, you will also have developed an improvement plan. You should now begin the process of implementing the actions within the improvement plan, so as to be compliant with the standards before the commencement of Phase Two from January 2011.
The summary report should contain a rating against each Standard as evaluated by the organisation. It should also include two or three key areas for improvement in relation to each standard.
The department will be using the information provided in the summary report to monitor that organisations have completed their self-assessments. It will also use the information as a guide to how it might prioritise its support to funded organisations in the future.
The department does not require that you submit your detailed self-assessment workbook or detailed improvement plan. However you may choose to share your improvement plan with departmental staff in order to ensure your organisation will be compliant with the standards by January 2011.
The electronic version of the workbook is provided so organisations can access the most efficient means of conducting a self-assessment and populating a summary report and improvement plan. It is entirely up to your organisation whether it uses the hard copy of the workbook or the electronic tool, and your organisation will not be disadvantaged either way.
However it is the strong preference of the department that you send an electronic version of the summary report. Organisations that conduct the self-assessment using the hard copy of the workbook will be able to use the electronic tool to create a summary report. Organisations that conduct their self-assessment using the electronic tool will be able to automatically generate a self-assessment summary. Instructions on how to generate and submit a self-assessment summary report are outlined in the self-assessment manual and the user-guide for the electronic tool.
Organisations can submit a paper form of the summary report if they are unable to access the electronic tool in the first instance.
Electronic self-assessment summaries should be sent to standards.team@communities.qld.gov.au.
Hard copies should be sent to:
Sector Development
Department of Communities
GPO BOX 806
BRISBANE QLD 4001
The sole requirement for acquittal for the development grant consists of the submission of the self-assessment summary report by 2 March 2009.
The Queensland Council of Social Service 
(QCOSS) has been funded to support implementation of the standards. This support includes a statewide network of community sector development workers. Contact QCOSS on 1800 232 569 to find out about your local community sector development worker.
Further resources are available on the Community Door web-site to assist organisations to implement the Standards, at www.communitydoor.org.au.
Indigenous organisations will be able to access support from a network of Indigenous officers employed by the department, who can support them to undertake a self-assessment and implement an improvement plan. If your organisation is interested in receiving this support, contact Sector Development on 3224 4090.
From January 2011, compliance with the standards by organisations receiving over $100,000 per annum in triennial departmental funding will be monitored as part of regular service agreement monitoring by departmental staff.
The standards will be incorporated into the Performance and Progress Appraisal (PAPA) process.
In this situation, it is not necessary to conduct a separate self-assessment for each program or site, though your organisation may choose to do so. It will be sufficient to do a single organisation-wide assessment or a self-assessment around geographic regions or program funding types.
Some standards may be best reviewed at the organisational level (for example, standards 7–11), whereas others (for example, standards 1–6) may be best reviewed by service level, particularly if target groups or service delivery models vary from service to service.
The department is not expecting all organisations to fully meet the standards at their self-assessment, and is not expecting that all organisations will be operating at the same level.
Organisations that are honest and, where appropriate, give themselves low ratings for some standards will not be putting their funding at risk. Instead the department will use a partnership approach to work closely with these organisations to assist them to meet the required standard by 2011.
The intent of the standards is to ensure that all services reach a universal minimum level of quality. Areas requiring improvement could easily be lost within a larger assessment if they simply ‘averaged out’ and did not influence overall scores. By highlighting the areas against a standard that require improvement, organisations can respond by ensuring all aspects of their services meet the required level.
Client feedback is one of the four evidence types that organisations can use to assess their performance against the standards, and organisations are required to analyse client feedback as part of the self-assessment process. A sample client feedback form is included in the self-assessment workbook, for organisations to use if they do not already have a process for collecting feedback from clients.
However organisations are not required to give themselves a rating against client feedback. Instead they are asked to use client feedback as important additional information to influence the ratings they give themselves for the other evidence types.
The policy templates and guides are offered only as a tool that organisations can use to develop their policy base if they wish. The headings and content are not mandatory. Nor is it mandatory to have 36 separate policies. However organisations that develop and implement policies similar to the templates and guides can be confident they are meeting the standards and addressing all the relevant areas under the standards.
A major task for the department when self-assessment summaries are sent back to it in 2009 will be to check that each service has been included in an assessment. As services are often called by various interchangeable names, it will be necessary to ensure that the department knows which services are being referred to. The best way to do this is to provide organisations with the names and numbers kept by the department so that the department will be able to match these up later.
The alternative to having the service details already loaded was to send the names and numbers out to each service individually. It was decided that this could create practical difficulties that could be avoided by installing the details on the tool. Please note that no information has been included in the tool that is not already publicly available.
