Quality improvement framework
Ensuring quality is a central and cross-cutting component of Sightsavers’ strategic framework for 2009-2013. We are committed to working with our partners to provide high quality health, education and social inclusion services for our beneficiaries. In order to find out more about what quality means for Sightsavers and how we ensure it in our programmes, we interviewed Taitos Matafeni, Sightsavers’ Head of Monitoring and Evaluation Systems.
Why is ‘quality’ important to Sightsavers?
Quality is important to Sightsavers and our partners as it instils a sense of confidence that our work delivers the best outcomes and impacts for our stakeholders. Quality challenges us to learn from failure more so than learning from what goes well and implores us to continually improve our work. This is very important at a time when we reposition our organisation from a UK charity to an international development organisation. An important aspect of quality for Sightsavers is having rigorous quality benchmarks and standards which are informed by sectoral best practice and which challenge our work to be aligned with the best sectoral approaches and practices in the areas we work in.
What does ‘quality’ mean for Sightsavers?
Quality means that our work is:
- Grounded in research, evidence and best practice
- Able to deliver planned outcomes and expected impacts
Cost effective; - Accountable to its beneficiaries and;
- Sustainable in the long run as governments and other stakeholders replicate and scale up our efforts.
What is our strategy for achieving our organisational objective of ensuring high quality programmes?
Under the guidance of a quality strategy document, we have develop four interrelated frameworks that will work together to help us achieve this objective. The first is the Programme Quality Improvement Framework which is formed around the programme cycle, where we have six benchmarks which our programmes aspire to attain. Tied in with these programme cycle management benchmarks, are specific thematic benchmarks and standards for our specific areas of work.
How do we monitor and evaluate the quality of our programmes?
We have a set of minimum standards for all our interventions, which our teams apply on a regular basis starting from when an intervention is designed, right through its implementation to scale up, exit or redesign. We use the programme cycle management approach and have six benchmarks which define what a programme should look like at each of of the programme cycle stages.
We will be undertaking a quality assessment of randomly selected programmes, the results of which we will share across the organisation as part of improving the quality of our work.
How do we ensure the sustainability of quality in programmes?
Several processes are in place to ensure sustainability for quality. For starters, our quality strategy and, specifically the quality standards, were a joint effort by all our staff in Sightsavers. This ensures ownership of quality drivers by everyone in the organisation.
By approaching quality through the programme cycle, it also means that, at each stage of the programme, quality becomes an integral part of our day to day work. However, we have to guard against it becoming so mainstreamed that people forget about quality. Hence, as part of our organisational SIM Card reporting, we have an annual requirement for our teams to report back on how they are doing as far as the quality benchmarks are concerned.
Another process we use to ensure sustainability in our programmes is through the provision of technical assistance as part of our organisational objective 10 from the SIM Card. Our technical experts are custodians of certain thematic quality standards such as health systems strengthening, social inclusion, human resource development programming. Each time they visit programmes, they work to ensure that the standards are being applied, as well as provide support in areas where there may be challenges with application. You can click here to read more about our technical experts.
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