Moray Council’s experience of PSIF as a self-assessment tool dates back to 2009. Late in 2018, the decision was made to use the PSIF checklist approach. Working in partnership with the Improvement Service, a pilot was planned. It was agreed to carry out two initial pilot assessments one in Waste Management and Building Standards & Development Management.
A programme of self-assessment was developed. Next came briefing sessions for managers in the pilot services to make them aware of the self-assessment process. It was hoped that the checklist approach coupled with a well facilitated self-assessment consensus day would support staff to move very quickly from prioritising the key issues/ challenges to improvement plans and outcomes. The next steps were:
- The Checklist (Smartsurvey) was distributed by email to the two services participating for completion and it was agreed that this would be open for a period of two weeks;
- When the surveys closed, the Improvement Service examined the returns and carried out preparation work in advance of their two day support visit to Moray.
Next it was the Consensus session. This presented the evidence from the Checklist survey and results gathered. Then the participants worked in groups to filter down the areas for improvement, reaching consensus on a small number of key improvement actions.
The final session was the Improvement Planning. Participants were asked to ‘flesh’ out the prioritised AFIs in terms of actions, risks, resources required, timescales, lead officers and performance measures.
At the end of day one of the PSIF self-assessment process, the service had a draft Improvement Plan to action, with the key areas for improvement identified.
Day 2 followed the same format as day one, except it was a different service area: Waste Management. This was more of a challenge as this service has many manual workers which required staff cover so they could participate in the sessions.
The draft improvement plan that had been produced has now been circulated to both services to implement. Some of the draft recommendations for improvements require individual and team actions which can then form part of our Service Plans. The actions that have been identified focus on areas that can be delivered which ensures that the time spent doing the PSIF process will have positive outcomes for the service.
The whole PSIF checklist approach experience is more streamlined and less resource-intensive than - previous exercises and has had a very positive impact. All in all, it has been an effective way to identify service improvements.
If you would like more information on Moray’s experience please contact Nichola Urquhart (Quality Management Systems Officer - Direct Services) at nichola.urquhart@moray.gov.uk