Curious Minds

You Say Picasso, We Say PQASSO

At Curious Minds we want to provide a great service.  We need a quality assurance system to help us look at all the different aspects of our organisation.  We want to know what we are doing well and where we can improve.

PQASSO is the Practical Quality Assurance System for Small Organisations.  It has been developed by The Charities Evaluation Service who also train and coordinate a network of PQASSO mentors. There are 11 standards to measure against, including Planning, Leadership & Management, Communications, Working With Others.

Each standard has 3 levels and organisations are expected to achieve Level 1 in all areas before deciding whether to progress to Levels 2 and 3.  Level 1 sets the minimum legal requirements that should be met as a service provider and employer, ensures planning and activities meet the business objectives and can be used to support the longer term development of the organisation.

 

For example in the Working With Others  section we felt we were 'progressing well' on the following: "The organisation identifies key organisations with whom it needs to work for a range of purposes", and will be developing a contact management system so we can fully meet this at level 1.

 

Glen Meskell and Tina Taylor from Curious Minds are currently working with colleagues and their mentor  Graham Whalley from Young Lancashire to achieve Level 1.  The process is proving extremely useful, provoking ideas and discussion for everyone in the team.

 

We have a lot to be proud of, but also plenty to room for improvement and PQASSO gives us the framework to make it happen.