Improvements to our Quality Standards

RAN's Board of Trustees have reviewed our RAN Quality Standard, and following feedback from our assessors and from RAN Members who have undertaken the Standards, we've made it a bit easier to provide evidence to achieve those Standards.

No, we haven't comprised the quality of the Quality, so to speak.

But we know that for organisations that signpost and give assisted information, the requirement to check one in five enquiries every month may have been arduous. So, we've revised that to one in ten enquiries needing a check that will be recorded. This means that the 1.4 RAN Quality Measure has been revised (page 9 of the QS self-assessment booklet).

However, for organisations that give advice and do casework, (RAN Quality Measure 2.4, page 14) we felt that the existing checking of one in five should stand, to reflect the more-complex work those organisation are doing.

We have also redefined that this Enquiry Checking (page 19, Further Terminology) can be done by a Supervisor, line-manager or 'a competent peer'. This is to reflect the complexity of some organisations and wide spans of responsibility for some staff.

We hope that RAN Members about to undertake the self-assessment and subsequent discussions and visit from our Independent Assessors will find these changes make the process easier, without compromising quality.

We've thus revised the Standards and will reprint and reissue those very soon. The QS Booklet on this website will then be revised from v9 (April 2017) to v10 (June 2018).

If your organisation wants more information about the RAN Quality Standard or these simplifications, please contact bdm (at) readingadvicenetwork.org.uk