Amendments to the specialist quality mark
In a continuing series, Richard Miller offers advice on burning issues facing legal aid lawyers
Q What changes have been made in the specialist quality mark (SQM) during the consultation process?
A Since the draft specialist quality mark was published last summer, a number of significant changes have been made.
If you read through the draft or attended one of the Legal Service Commission's roadshows, you will need to check what has and has not been introduced in the final version.
Access to services (business planning)Seamless service (referrals and signposting)Running the organisationPeople managementRunning the serviceCommitment to qualityAudit processImplementation date
Access to services (business planning)
Under this section, the language used has been changed to try to avoid most of the management-speak.
Phrases such as 'skills and resources profiles', 'service delivery' and 'service promotion' have been replaced with plain English.
The reference to 'community profile' has been removed.
Instead, it has been made clear that where a Community Legal Services Partnership needs assessment or strategic plan exists, you must have read it.
Where no such documents exist, the summary of local influences you identify in your SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis will generally be adequate.
You do not need a separate document.
The anti-discrimination policy now no longer needs to outlaw discrimination on the grounds of political persuasion.
It was considered that this would be too problematic.
It does need to cover race, colour, ethnic or national origins, sex, marital status or sexual orientation, disability, age or religion.
It has also been confirmed that it is not a mandatory requirement that you provide the auditor with a copy of your business plan, but the onus is on you to find other means of satisfying the auditor that you have met the requirements if you wish to keep the plan confidential.
Seamless service (referrals and signposting)
The whole concept of active signposting has been dropped.
A referral takes place only if there is an existing client relationship with the person being directed to another organisation.
In any other case, the procedure will be classed as signposting.
The requirement for keeping records of signposting has been removed.
In the draft SQM, the minimum required for personal callers was to provide them with the directory and assist them in finding an alternative supplier.
This has now been amended that the minimum requirement is to supply the caller with the Community Legal Service Call Centre number, 0845 608 1122.
Running the organisation
The new requirements in respect of time recording have been removed.
The current legal aid franchise quality assurance standard (LAFQAS) requirements will be put into the contract instead of the quality mark, and the proposed additional requirements are being dropped.
People management
The requirements relating to an 'open recruitment policy' have been clarified.
What the commission requires reflects the requirements of the common law and best practice to avoid any claims of discrimination.
There are new provisions setting out rules for the appointment of external, temporary and deputy supervisors.
External supervisors will generally be permitted only while the organisation is training an internal supervisor, but where casework volumes are too low to meet the hours requirement, an external supervisor can be a permanent feature.
Temporary supervisors are to cover short absences by the main supervisor, and the requirements are therefore relatively restrictive.
Deputy supervisors are those you wish to train as future supervisors.
You need a plan for how they will meet the full requirements.
Provided you have such a plan, the supervisor can delegate to the deputy various of the supervisory functions, but will retain overall responsibility for those functions.
There are wider circumstances in which the task of file review can be delegated to people other than the category supervisor.
Running the service
The requirement for a staff record detailing information about each caseworker and the case types they handle has been removed.
Some of this information is required in other documents, such as the departmental structure documents, and you may still want to record this information in connection with your business planning, but it is not mandatory.
The definition of key dates to be required in the back-up system has been revised.
It now covers only limitation dates and court/tribunal hearing dates, although you can include other dates if you so wish.
The proposal for the number of file reviews per caseworker has changed.
The original draft proposed a minimum of two files per month, apart from supervisors.
The new variant does not set any mandatory minimum, but it is up to you to justify the number of reviews with reference to the norms set out in the guidance, the level of experience of the fee earner and findings on previous file reviews.
Reviews must be carried out not less than every six months, and will generally be more frequent.
For criminal contract holders, the contract specifies that reviews must be monthly.
The requirements for evaluating suppliers have been clarified.
Where a report or opinion meets your requirements, no separate note to this effect is required.
Where it does not, this must be recorded in some way on the file, but a letter to the supplier or to the client spelling out the deficiencies will be all the evidence required.
Commitment to quality
The requirement for a client feedback procedure remains, but there has been some clarification of the requirements.
Data collection must take place at least once a year, but this can be on a sample basis.
No mandatory minimum is set for the sample size, but it 'must be sufficient to encourage meaningful response data'.
You may want to cover all departments each year, but you are not required to do so, as long as each department is covered at least once every three years.
There is also a proposal on which the commission will be consulting, that arose during the consultation.
As it stands, the quality mark contains almost all of the elements of a risk management system except for the appointment of a risk manager, identification of operational risks and a process for dealing with any risks outside the norm.
If these items are included, there is a good chance that many firms may be able to use the quality mark to negotiate lower indemnity insurance premiums (or at least to avoid increases).
Therefore, the commission is consulting on introducing these elements from April 2003; but it may well make sense to you to implement them along with the other changes.
Audit process
There are several changes to the audit process, and during the consultation, it has become clearer how they will operate.
It is intended that in future, minor or isolated failures should give rise only to an observation.
A consistent failure will result in a quality concern being issued.
Whether this is a general or a critical quality concern will depend on what section of the SQM it relates to, not on the view of the auditor as to the severity of the breach.
Multiple general quality concerns can also of themselves result in a critical quality concern.
Implementation date
For existing quality marked suppliers, the implementation date will be October 2002.
From April 2002 the commission's auditors will raise observations on those changes that are merely a clarification of existing requirements.
l Questions for this column should be sent to Richard Miller at: 93 Turnmill Street, London EC1M 5TQ, DX 53339 Clerkenwell or e-mail: richard@lapg.co.uk
Richard Miller is the director of the Legal Aid Practitioners Group and a Law Society Council member.
He was previously the franchise liaison officer for a small firm of solicitors that had franchises in crime, family, welfare benefits and personal injury.
Mr Miller cannot answer questions other than through this column, unless they are from members of the Legal Aid Practitioners Group
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