Quality Standard (PQASSO)

PQASSO stands for Practical Quality Assurance System for Small Organisations. It is a straight forward quality assurance system designed for small charities and voluntary organisations. It is widely recognised by funders and stakeholders as a leader within the voluntary sector as a system which wil enable improvements to be made in key business areas such as management, governance, staffing etc. Click here to find out more about PQASSO.

Having previously achieved PQASSO Levels 1 and 2, St. Martin's has now been awarded Level 3; the first charitable care home in the area to do so! Level 3 is the uppermost level within the standard which is equivalent to the highest accepted international standards of organisational performance.

St. Martin's has incorporated the PQASSO working standards in a number of ways such as:

- always checking to see if anything could have been done better, and then trying to improve it next time. We welcome diversity and with referenced evidence we can prove it, both in how we organise ourselves and who benefits from our activity

- consulting our stakeholders (resident, relatives, staff and trustees) to find out what they expect provides us with a flexible and objective measure to help maintain and improve our standards; the benefit of which will be felt in all the work that St. Martin's undertakes

St. Martin's was the first care home to achieve level 2 in Southend in 2005 and is now, in 2007, the first charitable care home the area to achieve Level 3.  We have evidence that through our work, we really have made a difference to the people we are working for and much of this is supported through external reviews and inspections.

To find out more about our work on PQASSO, please contact the Manager, Sue Field.