Purpose of this assignment

Quality is an essential component of health and social care services and a concept with many different interpretations and perspectives. It is important to both users of health and social care services and external stakeholders. In this unit, you will have gained knowledge of these differing perspectives and consider ways in which health and care service quality may be improved.

Improvement of service quality requires both the empowerment and involvement of users of services, as well as addressing the requirements of external regulatory bodies. You will have explored the requirements of external regulators and contrasted them with the expectations of those who use services. You will also have gained knowledge of some of the methods that can be used to assess different quality perspectives, and developed the ability to evaluate these methods against service objectives.

The aim of this assignment is to determine whether you have developed an understanding of different perspectives on health and social care service quality and how it is evaluated in order to empower and involve users of services.

Task 1  Individual Presentation

Understand differing perspectives of quality in relation to health and social care services

Included in Moodle (e-learning) is a copy of the CQC report on Folkestone Nursing Home (FNH). You are a consultant and you have been asked by the manager of FNH to do a presentation to the new staff members who have been recently employed to the centre. In your presentation you have to focus on different perspectives of quality in relation to the care home and the agencies it works with. In the Presentation, you are to:

• Explain perspectives that stakeholders in health and social care have regarding quality (AC 1.1)
• Analyse the role of external agencies in setting standards (AC 1.2)
• Assess the impact of poor service quality on health and social care stakeholders (AC 1.3)

Task 2  A Consultancy Report on understanding strategies for achieving quality in health and social care services

This task follows on from Task 1. The manager now asks you to write a Consultancy report that will be used as the basis for a plan to correct the deficiencies found. The questions are general but you are to use examples from the report in order to illustrate your points. The report should include:

• An explanation of the standards that exist in health and social care for measuring quality (AC 2.1)
• An evaluation of different approaches to implementing quality systems (AC 2.2)
• An analysis of potential barriers to delivery of quality health and social care services (AC 2.3)
• An evaluation of the methods for evaluating health and social care service quality with regard to external and internal perspectives (AC 4.1)
• A discussion of the impact that involving users of services in the evaluation process has on service quality (AC 4.2)

Task 3 Consultancy Report

In your second part of the consultancy report you need to address the following evaluating the organisations systems, policies and procedures. In the report, you are to:

• Evaluate the effectiveness of systems, policies and procedures used in the organisation in achieving quality in the service(s) offered (3.1)
• Analyse other factors that influence the achievement of quality in the organisation (3.2)
• Suggest ways in which the health and social care service could improve its quality (3.3)