CLAPA’s Peer and Parent Support Service Achieves Quality Standard Award
“‘Really helpful it helped to have the understanding of a parent that has been through exactly the same as myself.”
A parent who used the Peer & Parent Support Service
CLAPA’s Peer and Parent Support Service was recently awarded the Approved Provider Standard (APS) in recognition of the high standard of this project.
The Approved Provider Standard (APS) is the national quality standard designed specifically for mentoring and befriending projects, such as our one-to-one Peer and Parent Support Service. APS is managed and delivered by NCVO.
Claire Evans, our Regional Coordinator for Central England, worked with the NCVO to help them assess this service. “We are delighted to receive this recognition for our support services,” Claire says. “The APS standard is recognised throughout the third sector as a quality mark in Peer Support. Achieving the award demonstrates that the project met the ten requirements of the standard, and was independently assessed by experts in good practice in mentoring and befriending. We hope this standard will help people contacting CLAPA for support to feel confident and assured that we will provide a safe and effective service.”
APS aims to support safe and effective practice in mentoring and befriending, and is the only quality standard of its kind. Achieving the standard means our support service has been thoroughly assessed and found to exemplify good practice in:
- The service’s management and operation, including our commitment to safeguarding
- Our processes for identifying people in need of support and assessing their needs
- The way we train and manage our volunteer supporters
- The way the support relationships are managed and the results they achieve.
Our own assessment of this service found that at least 80% of adults and parents felt more positive about dealing with cleft-related challenges, and felt less isolated, after getting support from one of our trained volunteers. Read more statistics on the service.
We are very proud of our Peer and Parent Support Service and its fantastic outcomes, and it is wonderful to have our work recognised in this way.