Quality accreditation has many benefits for an organisation:
- It provides a framework to assist an organisation to develop best practice systems.
- It gives confidence to the community who use the services of the organisation.
- Over time, it creates a culture of continuous improvement for all aspects of an organisation's activities.
Quality accreditation can sometimes be a condition for funding, for either:
- specific services (eg National Homelessness Standards for Homelessness Services)
- the whole of an organisation (eg Australian Service Excellence Standards, International Standards Organisation or Quality Improvement Council).
Most community organisations use the Australian Service Excellence Standards (ASES) due to the affordable, easy to understand and internationally benchmarked community standards and related support resources.
For organisations that are not required to have quality accreditation for their funding but would like to grow their organisation, the ASES development tool STARservice is a good place to start. It provides a step-by-step guide for the essential elements, especially for new and emerging organisations.
