Good Practice Framework

The overall aim of the good practice framework is to provide a tool to identify as objectively as possible, those services and projects that are delivering good practice in employment and skills services.

Within the framework good practice is defined as:

Projects and organisations delivering high quality services, that are effective in delivering positive employment and skills outcomes, in line with the principles and requirements of the Employability Framework.

What is the framework and how can it help me?

The framework is a toolkit which can be used by employment and skills projects or services to self assess their current delivery by working through performance criteria in the good practice application form. More

The framework provides an opportunity for projects to demonstrate whether they consider their activity to be performing well against a range of factors. This information put forward by projects should be supported by evidence such as client feedback.

A dedicated assessor will conduct the assessment and score each element using the good practice scoring system.

The framework has been developed to help projects or services to enhance their quality and impact by creating service improvement plans following the assessment as well as promoting their service across the City Region as being an example of good practice.

If your project or service does not achieve good practice status first time round, you will be supported in making the necessary improvements by your dedicated assessor and another opportunity to be assessed will be provided.

Background

In December 2009, the City Region Partnership commissioned the development of a good practice assessment framework, to be used as a means of identifying examples of good practice in the delivery of employment and skills projects. More

New Skills Consulting was appointed to work with the partners to develop and test the framework between January and March 2010.

In October 2010 a further role out of the framework was put in place by employing a good practice coordinator on a secondment basis. Within this role the Coordinator will independently verify all projects that go through the assessment process.

When good practice services are identified, the results will be used by City Region partners to:

Support service improvements - The good practice assessments will pinpoint aspects of services and projects that can be improved to further enhance their quality and impact. It will also enable information about the strongest services, and how they go about delivering, to be shared with other providers to help improve their services.

Establish the City Region as an exemplar - Examples of good practice will be used to promote the wider Tyne and Wear City Region as an area that is delivering effective and innovative employment and skills services. This, in turn, will help the area to influence Government and policy makers, strengthening the case to attract further funding to the area.

How does the framework operate?

The framework is made up of a set of standard criteria against which all employment and skills services and projects can be assessed. More

The criteria fall within two broad headings:

Common - The 11 common criteria explore fairly universal aspects of efftive project delivery

Service specific - The service specific criteria exlore the extent to which the service is delivered in line with the requirements of the 5 key aspects of the Employability Services Model.

The Employability Services Model is available to view here.

All projects or services are assessed against all 11 of the common criteria. However, they are only assessed against the service specific criteria for those aspect/s of the employability services model that they cover.

An assessor undertakes an independent, objective assessment of the project, using evidence supplied by the service provider supplemented with their own research, to analyse the extent to which the project or service meets each of the criteria. This could include a site visit.

A points score is then allocated to each criteria, on the following basis:

Description	Score
An excellent match with the definition of good practice, based on a significant number and variety of objective evidence sources	3
A good match with the definition of good practice, based on more than one source of objective evidence	2
Partly meets the definition of good practice, but the range of evidence is limited and some of it is not objective	1
A poor match with the definition of good practice, with little or no convincing evidence to support the case	0

On the basis of the total score, the project or service achieving a minimum threshold score of 66% is awarded good pracitce status. The results are independently verified by the Good Practice Co-ordinator. Finally, the results of the assessment are used to pinpoint key strengths and areas of improvement, and a service improvement plan is created to guide future development of the service.

Key Stages in the Assessment Process

The document is available to view here.

Good Practice Database

The attached database provides details of all those projects and organisations in the Tyne and Wear City Region area that have achieved good practice status. Please note that those achieving good practice status to date are just a small selection of the large number of employment and skills providers operating in the area currently. If you would like a full comprehensive list of all of the providers that we work with please contact the Tyne and Wear City Region Employment and Skills Team direct.