Practices for Promoting the Effectiveness of Welfare Service Inspection: International Review and Learning from Success Stories

Background

In Israel, as in other countries, recent decades have seen a significant increase in the outsourcing of welfare services to NGOs and private companies. Although the entities directly providing the services belong to the second and third sector, the government remains responsible for policymaking and for inspecting these services. This inspection is designed to ensure the quality, safety and accessibility of the services provided, protect clients’ wellbeing and welfare, and promote constant quality improvement. While recognized as important, the inspection of welfare services is complex and often subject to public criticism. As part of the redesign of inspection policy at the Ministry of Welfare and Social Affairs, its Quality and Regulation Division commissioned the Quality Assurance Team at the Myers-JDC-Brookdale Institute to identify factors that could enhance the effectiveness of welfare service inspection.

Objective

To map key global trends in welfare service inspection and identify best practices that contribute to its effectiveness.

Method

This study included two complementary elements: (1) An international review of information from websites, academic literature, official documents and policy papers (public sources), to examine what is known today about factors that enhance the effectiveness of inspection; (2) Learning from success: Focusing on six success stories in welfare inspection to learn about best practices contributing to effective inspection from the points of view of both inspectors and the service providers being inspected.

Key Findings and Insights

The study indicated that defining an inspection policy with clear, uniform and consistent standards for both inspection processes and for the quality of the services being inspected is an essential prerequisite for effective inspection. Such a policy enables inspectors to evaluate the services and measure their quality, and allows the inspection agency to define its goals and strive to achieve them.

Together with policy-related aspects, the inspection work itself needs to adopt an approach promoting responsive inspection – goal-directed inspection that relies on discretion, takes into considerations the characteristics of the service being inspected (including its needs and the degree of its responsiveness to address its shortcomings).

In addition, the success stories from the point of view of the service providers being inspected pointed to the importance of treating inspection as a resource – a major vehicle for guiding and promoting the service providers, and in the welfare of the service recipients. This view relies on positioning the inspector as an authority in knowledge areas related to the service provider’s work, service users and procedures, as well as an expert in the inspection work itself.

Finally, a key practice suggested by both the success stories and the review of the academic literature was establishing trust between the inspector and the service providers. This involves forming a good, continuous, and reciprocal relationship between the inspector and the service providers being inspected. This in turn enables the inspectors to acknowledge the strengths and weaknesses of the service providers and to be prepared to support them also in times of crisis, while enabling the service providers to accept criticism and act to remedy any problems identified.