Presentation given by Jiri Růžička, SAD, Czech Republic, at a FEANTSA Conference on "Quality in Social Services from the Perspective of Services Working with Homeless People", Luxembourg City, Luxembourg, 2011

1. Quality System
for Homeless Services
in the Czech Republic

2. Quality system for homeless services
 Quality system for all social services incl. homeless
services is given by the Act 108/2006 Coll., Social services
Act and relevant Ministry of Social Affairs decree.
 All social services are provided in the frame of mentioned
law.
 There are 15 quality standards divided into 48 criteria
defined in the Ministry of Social Affairs Decree. 17 criteria
are crucial.
 Quality standards are principally divided to Procedural
Standards, Operational Standards and Personal Standards
(related to human resources).

3. Procedural Standards
1. Objectives and methods of providing social services.
2. Protection of personal rights.
3. Dealing with a person interested in the social service.
4. Contract on social services.
5. Individual planning for the time progress of the social
service.
6. Documentation on the provision of the social service.
7. Complaints concerning the quality or method of
provision of the social service.
8. Links between the social service provided and other
available resources.

4. Personal Standards
9. Personal and organisational resources to secure the
social service.
10. Professional development of employees.

5. Operational Standards
11. Local and time accessibility of the social service
provided.
12. Information awareness about the social service
provided.
13. Environment and conditions.
14. Emergency and contingency situations.
15. Quality improvement of the social service.

6. Quality system for homeless services
 Each social service incl. homeless social services have to be
registered and provider has to fulfil quality standards.
 Fulfil Quality Standards means to develop a system of
internal documentation.
 Documentation defines attitudes and working procedures within the
service.
 All documents have to be in accordance with quality standards and
common practice.
 State wants to control and actually controls quality in social
services. State does it through educated quality inspectors.
 Inspection process does not work well because of lack of
quality inspectors compare to number of social services.

7. Advantages of having strictly prescriptive
quality standards
 Quality system in the Czech republic is rather
strictly prescriptive.
 Advantages:
 Establishment the system of work.
 Unify different approaches to service provision.
 Similar approach is guaranteed in provision of the same
kind of service in the various places.

8. Disadvantages of having strictly prescriptive
quality standards
 Disadvantages:
 In case of the Czech Republic some quality standards are
developed according care services, so sometimes it is hard
to fulfil these standards in low threshold homeless services.
 Risk of different perception and rules interpretation by
quality inspectors during quality inspections process.
 Risk of particular focus to fulfil the quality criteria instead
of particular focus to help to client.
 Risk of heavy administrative burden.

9. Our organisation complies with the
standards
 Developing rules for fulfilling quality standards
and their implementation are still running process.
 We had quality inspection in two of five services.
 Risk of perception, the success in implementation
of quality system means successfully passed quality
inspection only.
 We made methodologies and other documents
describing the content of service mostly separately
for each certain social service.

10. Our organisation complies with the
standards
 Some rules are applicable for whole organisation
and for all services in general. Such rules are
mostly related to human resources. Other rules,
procedural and organizational, are necessary to
develop separately for certain service.
 Quality standards helped us better understand
meaning of social work with clients in night shelter
service, so we had to make completely new
methodology.

11. Quality system for homeless services based
on non-prescriptive quality principles
 Advantages:
 More freedom for organisations in service provision.
 Less administrative.
 Disadvantages:
 Less measurability.
 Hard to find criteria of distribution financial support from
public sources.
 Risk of different content within the same kind of service in
the various places provided.

12. Conclusion
 It is better to have rather general aims than strictly
prescriptive rules in EU level, due to dramatically
different legislation, service typology and approaches
in particular member states. There is not realistic
goal to unify typologies of homeless services across
Europe.
 It is good to define quality criteria of homeless
services in certain locality.
 Caution at the risk of disproportionate
administrative workload

13. www.elimvsetin.cz
Thank you for your attention!
Jiří Růžička
e-mail: jiri.ruzicka@elimvsetin.cz
tel.: +420 571 412 020, +420 605 062 274