What are Victoria's Disability Service Standards Really Measuring?

Abstract

For the past 20 years, disability service standards have been the benchmark against which disability service organisations have been measured. Furthermore, they have been used by the Victorian Government to determine the quality of the supports being provided to people with disabilities by registered disability service organisations. Yet little is known about how determinations about service compliance are made against these standards, making it difficult to gauge what they really measure. The purpose of this paper is to identify how compliance with disability service standards is determined, by exploring the nature of the indictors embedded in the standards and the methods used to measure these. The study used a qualitative content analysis to explore the nature of the Victorian disability service standards. The 387 indicators listed in the standards describe the evidence required to determine compliance with the four standards. Analysis of these indicators revealed that 81% required review of written information, such as a support plan or client file note, and 19% required observations of staff practice or interviews with service users and staff. This paper presents, for the first time, an independent analysis of the content of the Victorian disability service standards.

Keywords:

• disability
• regulation
• service standards