Supported Employment Quality Framework Erasmus Project

Project Title

Supported Employment Quality Framework

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Quality Assurance; Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment; Quality Improvement Institutions and/or methods (incl. school development)

Project Summary

Context/background:
Our main goal was to improve services for vulnerable job seekers, employees and their employers.
The better serviceproviders are in providing a qualitative supported employment (= suem) service, the better they can help realising an inclusive labourmarket. Despite different actions the employment rate of people with a disability throughout Europe still is significantly lower than the overall employment rate.
In this way the project relates to the EU2020 target for inclusive growth and to the UN Convention on Rights for People with a Disability, art. 27 (work and employment) and the resolution of 2015/05/20 of the European Parliament to endorse that convention. It also relates to the EC’s European Disability Strategy (2010-2020) and during the project the European Pilar on social rights was launched. Within the pillar, principles 3, 4 and 17 also mention the right to equal access to labourmarket for PwD.

Objective of the project:
The objective was to develop a quality framework for suem- organisations. This would allow them to see if they are organising and offering their services in the most effective and efficient way and how to improve these services.
Quality is one of the values that the EUSE (European Union of Supported Employment) wanted to develop and keep emphasis on as a strategic key point. Because by improving the quality of the service providers you get better results and this on different levels: customers are more satisfied, the staff is motivated and skilled, businessresults get better and in communities can deal better with becoming inclusive.
Hence the final target group (workseekers with a (dis)ability) benefits: improving people by improving the quality of service providers.
The auditsystem related to this model is designed via the ‘single audit principle’. So organizations that already have a quality model can easily assess their organization(and make a growth and development plan) on the basic principles of supported employment.

Description of activities:
We started with analysing and comparing existing quality systems and standards, both more general (e.g. EFQM, ESF Flanders growthmodel) and specific within supported employment (BASE and EUSE quality standards). Based on these we came up with a framework that we used to start building the self assessment.
This self-assessment gives an overview of points in which the organization can grow, improve and further develop in using supported employment.
In every country we had the first draft tested by a couple suem-organisations and based on their comment we adapted the selfassessment tool.
Since a self-assessment only provides a screenshot of the organisation, it’s equally important to know how to move forward based on the information of the assessment. So next step was building a growth and development tool. Within suem it’s more important to show you want to grow as a team and use the suem-principles within your own organisation rather then only focussing on individual performances.
We then brought together the knowledge and know how gathered and made a theory and a practice book.
The theory book describes the theory behind the developed quality model and repeats briefly what is suem, why to use it and what are the suem-values. Furthermore it consists of the self-assesment tool and growth-and development tool. The practical book really is a hands-on book. You need the theory first in order to be able to use it. It gives extra prompts to help filling in the assessment and leaves room for describing the proof and immediate thoughts for improvement actions. It also provides different templates to support an organisation to arrange actions for improvement after the self-assessment is ready.

Results and impact attained:
We have a ready to use suem quality framework with self-assessment and growth and development tool. Moreover we can give training to future suem-assessors in order to get more and more suem-organisations using it in a standadised way.
Within the project countries we still continue doing self-assessments, helping organisations and will get back with the national results in spring 2018 to see what needs to be done next. Also different other countries have asked to start working with the tool. Within EUSE the dissemination will go on.
We really felt there was a need for these tools and the willingness to start working with it throughout European suem-organisations is big.
Now having a quality model specifically for suem, this can contribute to make sure our customers (vulnerable work seekers and their employers) get the best service in order to find and keep their job on the regular labour market.

Long term benefits:
Because of the standardised way of assessing it becomes possible for suem-organisations to benchmark and learn from each other.
By becoming better in providing supported employment the ‘turnover’ gets less, so more people can benefit from the service delivered.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 232490 Eur

Project Coordinator

SUEM.BE & Country: BE

Project Partners

• Fundación Emplea
• Supported Employment Norge (SENO)
• European Union Supported Employment
• Irish Association of Supported Employment Ltd.
• British Association for Supported Employment