Policy Statement

Our Federated commitment 

Home-Start is committed to high standards of practice for all aspects of work enabling family support services and supporting local Home-Start schemes. Home-Start aims to ensure that its services meet the needs of its service users at all times in accordance with obligations, its policies and procedures. Home-Start UK agrees to maintain quality standards against which performance can be evaluated. The Home-Start Quality Assurance (HSQA) is a set of bespoke standards, which assess compliance of Local Home-Starts (collectively referred to as “the Network”) with their quality obligations as set out in the Home-Start Handbook.

Home-Start UK’s Role

Home-Start UK is the centre of a federated network of Local Home-Starts across the four nations of the UK. HSUK does not interact directly with the end-user (the families). Instead, HSUK maintains a relationship with all Local Home-Starts. As the lead of the network, HSUK offers guidance, learning opportunities, and resources to enable the Network to effectively support vulnerable families and children in their communities.

HSUK maintains a relationship with the Network via a contract (“the Handbook Agreement”). Each Local Home-Start (“LHS”) agrees to the terms and conditions of the Handbook, ensuring that they meet high standards. In return, HSUK offers support along with the reputation of the Home-Start brand.

The Network aka “our Customer” is an essential part of the quality process and to ensure this is fulfilled, all employees receive training to ensure awareness and understanding of our Quality Management System and their impact on the network satisfaction.

The Quality Management System is maintained and is subject to internal and external audits. The requirements of the Quality Management System are mandatory, and all staff have a responsibility to adhere to them.

 

Definitions

 There are two separate quality systems in the federation.

1. 1. Home-Start Quality Assurance (HSQA) is a set of bespoke standards and the system by which HSUK evaluates the compliance of the network with their quality obligations as set out in the Home-Start Handbook.

1. 2. To support our quality commitments, HSUK have implemented and maintains a Quality Management System, based around the requirements of ISO 9001:2015, with the exclusion of measurement traceability (7.1.5) and property belonging to external parties (8.5.3).