Self-Assessment Framework for Crisis Pregnancy and Post Abortion Counselling Services
The development of a Self-assessment Framework for crisis pregnancy and post abortion counselling services was set out in the HSE Sexual Health & Crisis Pregnancy Programme Strategy 2012-2016 ‘Participating in a national approach that promotes good sexual health, informed decision making, evidence informed practice and access to high quality services’. The development of standards in the area of crisis pregnancy counselling is an important step in ensuring a quality service is available to all who access it.
The standards were designed in line with the National Standards for Safer Better Healthcare (HIQA) and consist of 8 themes broken down into 28 essential elements.
There are 4 incremental levels of quality for each standard and at each level there is a set of guiding prompts which assist a service in selecting their level of quality.
- Emerging Improvement (EI)
- Continued Improvement (CI)
- Sustained Improvement (SI)
- Excellence (E)
The Framework seeks to establish a reference scale on which a provider can establish its current status against key indicators of service quality. The Framework helps the service to identify the quality improvement actions it may need to put in place to address any gaps identified during the assessment process in order to progress through the levels of quality.
