Clients deserve the best quality advice we can provide. To ensure this, a focus on quality needs to be embedded at all organisational and operational levels and be reflected in a culture of continuous improvement.
We believe that the best way to achieve this is to have is an externally awarded quality mark. Organisations that have done this hold the Advice Quality Standard mark. They are our Accredited members.
Accredited members have shown evidence in the following areas:
- Access to the service
- Seamless service
- Meeting client’s needs
- Commitment to quality
- And more
For more information about the evidence requirements, please visit:
Advice Quality Standard – Advice Services Alliance
However, if an organisation does not have the Advice Quality Standard mark we believe that this does not preclude a quality advice service. We would therefore expect that advice services should at least have the following in place:
- a Strategy or Development Plan for your service for the next three years;
- an Equality and Diversity Policy;
- a Complaints and Feedback Policy and Procedure;
- policies that ensure advice given is impartial, independent, and confidential;
- a procedure for recording the advice given and action taken;
- a procedure for checking the quality of the advice;
- a Training and Development policy;
- a procedure to ensure advisers have access to the information they need, and this is kept up to date;
- professional Indemnity Insurance.
In terms of a procedure for checking the quality of advice, we endorse the Advice Quality Standard established that there should be adequate information in case records around the following areas:
- Establishing the facts and diagnosing the problems
- Advice
- Action or support
- Signposting and referral
- Advice records