Modernising Community Care - The Housing Contribution

9.0 PERFORMANCE REVIEW

General Principles

9.1 The focus of existing guidance has been on the monitoring and evaluation of the community care policy by The Scottish Office. This theme is continued in "Modernising Community Care". Performance review undertaken on a regular basis should, however, be an integral part of internal management and public accountability processes for all housing bodies. Performance review must also involve users and carers. This applies equally to interagency community care activities in which housing is involved and to "housing only" activities. Performance review is also a central element of Best Value, to encourage transparency for users, accountability to consumers and continuous improvement.

9.2 Performance review is easily described but can be complex and time consuming to implement, particularly in an interagency context. However, it helps to achieve Best Value and ensure that both community care objectives and people's needs are being met. It is important that a performance review is carried out in the context of a fully accountable interagency structure.

9.3 There are six main elements to performance review: -

• objectives and desired outcomes. The starting point must be a clear statement of what outcomes are to be achieved through the activity or housing concerned;
• standards. These provide the detailed statement about quality of services and accommodation against which actual performance is to be measured, in addition to outcomes in terms of the impact of services;
• indicators. These include both quantitative and qualitative measures of performance. They can cover inputs, outputs, outcomes and impact assessment, but it is essential that outcomes are included in addition to efficiency measures. They can be developed in line with SMART principles i.e. specific, measurable, action orientated, realistic and timed;
• targets. The translation of the objectives and standards into specific achievements to be made over a particular time period;
• recording systems. The ways in which information is collected in order to enable monitoring and reporting to take place;
• reports. Clear reporting mechanisms across the full range of interest groups, internal and external to the organisation.