Standards

Health Service Executive

Prosper Fingal provides personal and social services to adults with an intellectual disability on behalf of the Health Service Executive (HSE).  The particulars of service provision are specified in an annual ‘Service Arrangement’ between Prosper Fingal and the HSE.  The HSE agrees to give funding to Prosper Fingal subject to Prosper Fingal meeting the terms and conditions outlined in the Service Arrangement.  It is essential that Prosper Fingal meets its obligations set out in the Service Arrangement, which specifies, how the service operates.

The Interim Standards for New Directions

In 2007, a review of HSE funded adult day services was started.  The purpose of the review was to improve adult day services.  A report called New Directions was brought out by the HSE in 2012.  New Directions sets out a new approach to supporting adults with a disability based on the results of the review.  Prosper Fingal has to follow New Directions.

In order to check how well adult day services are following New Directions, the HSE have brought out Interim Standards for New Directions.  Prosper Fingal has to implement these standards, but are not being inspected on them yet.  Until an inspection process is brought in, the HSE has asked all adult day services to self-evaluate their services against the Interim Standards.  The self-evaluation has to be carried out by each of Prosper Fingal’s ten day service locations.

The HSE has given adult day services information and training on how to do the self-evaluation.  Staff from Prosper Fingal attended the training in June 2018.  All managers now have to start self-evaluating their services against the Interim Standards.  Part of that process includes asking stakeholders to rate how their service is doing.  Stakeholders include service users, staff and management.  We have to set actions for areas where the stakeholders agree that we can do more.  The self-evaluation is to help us to continually improve the services and how we provide them.

You can find out more about New Directions and the Interim Standards for New Directions on the HSE website www.hse.ie/newdirections

National Standards for Residential Services (HIQA)

As a provider of residential services to people with disabilities Prosper Fingal has to adhere to the ‘National Standards for Residential Services for Children and Adults with Disabilities’, developed by the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA).  These outcome based standards provide the framework for HIQA to assess whether Prosper Fingal’s residential service is providing high quality, safe and effective services and supports to the residents who live there, in line with the requirements of the Health Act 2007.  HIQA monitor this through a continuous process of registration and inspection.  There are thirty standards, set out under eight themes, used to determine if Prosper’s residential service is person-centred, of high quality and tailored to individual need.