The Human Services Standards (gazetted as Department of Health and Human Services Standards) represent a single set of service quality standards for department funded service providers and department-managed services.
COVID19 update - independent reviews against the Human Services Standards
The Department of Health and Human Services is aware of the impact of the virus on both organisations providing direct client services and independent review bodies ability to carry out reviews against the Human Services Standards. Given the current situation, department-endorsed independent review bodies have been advised to enact their governing bodies guidance regarding conducting reviews in extraordinary circumstances.
The Standards comprise of five standards: the department’s four service delivery and governance and management standards of a department endorsed independent review body.
Service delivery standards
The standards represents a single set of service quality standards for organisations delivering services to clients, summarised as:
- Empowerment: People's rights are promoted and upheld
- Access and Engagement: People’s right to access transparent, equitable and integrated services is promoted and upheld
- Wellbeing: People’s right to wellbeing and safety is promoted and upheld
- Participation: People’s right to choice, decision making and to actively participate as a valued member of their chosen community is promoted and upheld.
Governance and management
Organisations must be effectively governed and managed at all times and meet governance and management standards, as established by the Secretary to the Department of Health and Human Services.
The standards help to meet the Victorian Government’s commitment to reducing red tape faced by funded service providers. They do this by streamlining departmental accreditation requirements.
The standards and independent review process seek to ensure that people experience the same quality of service no matter which service provider they access.
The aim
The standards aim to:
- Embed and promote rights for people accessing services
- Assure the community that service providers are providing services that meet clients’ needs
- Develop a common and systemic approach to quality review processes
- Build greater transparency in quality requirements between the department, service providers, clients and the community
- Enable service providers to select an independent review body from an approved panel that meets their requirements and expectations
- Foster a culture of continuous quality improvement that is embedded in everyday practice and supports the meaningful participation of people in giving feedback about the services they require and the quality of services they receive
- Reduce red tape to help ensure service providers have more time and resources to provide services by reducing the number of quality reviews they are required to undertake.
The standards have been developed in easy English as a word only version and with pictures version. The documents are titled Rules: We call them the Human Services Standards.
Rules: We call them the Human Services Standards - with pictures (word)
Rules: We call them the Human Services Standards - text only (word)