AssetPlus Quality Assurance Tool – Derby youth justice service (July 2020)

Summary:
Derby youth justice service have created a quality assurance tool which is used by managers when undertaking quality assurance on AssetPlus stages.

Aims:

• Tool supports quality assuring the various stages of AssetPlus
• It can be used to tract emerging performance needs

Description:
Derby youth justice service have created an AssetPlus quality assurance tool, which is used by all service managers at Derby YJS when they complete Quality Assurance (QA) on an AssetPlus stage that has been completed by a practitioner under their supervision. The quality assurance form is used in all cases and for all stages but can be used in a variety of ways:

• As a checklist for case managers prior to submitting an AssetPlus stage for quality assurance.
• As a tool for managers to quickly and defensibly record compliance with the Derby service requirements for the completion of a valid AssetPlus stage.
• As a tool through which managers can give highly detailed feedback to case managers where there are practice issues to address.

Implementing the practice:

• Actions that result from the completion of the AssetPlus QA form (most commonly that amendments need to be made for the Stage to satisfy QA or that a referral into a specialist agency is required in response to the contents of the Stage) are followed up through the use of Microsoft Outlook 365 (issuing time-sensitive ‘targets’ as Outlook appointments and using the appointment reminder functionality in Outlook to see when tasks are due and chase up.
• The QA managers that completes the QA issues the tasks as agreed with the case manager.
• The AssetPlus QA tool can be completed by the manager alone when work has been submitted to them for QA or can be used as a professional development tool and completed with a case manager.
• Feedback is built into the AssetPlus QA form which has text spaces for detailed feedback and also includes separate ratings, in line with HMIP Inspection expectations and scoring, for Explanations and Conclusion and Pathways and Planning so that AssetPlus quality individually and across the service, over time can be tracked.

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