Pictured: Rachel Webb (Regional Manager – Fife), Karen Sweeney (Senior L&D business Partner), David Harkins (Quality & Risk Manager), Jim Gorman (Services Manager – Fife), Fliss Lister (Regional Manager – Central & Lothian Services) & Roy Aitken (Commercial Manager).

A drive for continuous improvement is embedded in the culture at Scottish Autism as we strive for excellence both as an employer and in the services we provide to autistic people across Scotland.  We drive improvement through the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence Model, a comprehensive business framework designed to help organisations strive towards excellence.  EFQM is currently used by over 30,000 businesses across the world.

Scottish Autism began its sustainable journey to excellence when we achieved the Committed to Excellence Award in June 2013, the Recognised for Excellence 3 star Award in June 2015 and the Recognised for Excellence 4 Star award in June 2017. The Recognised for Excellence is a prestigious award which followed a week-long visit in March 2017 by a number of Quality Scotland assessment team members. This was made up of people from a variety of business backgrounds across the UK and they met with our staff and examined a number of our core services. 

We are delighted to announce that six of our Scottish Autism staff members have successfully completed their EFQM Assessor Training and can now become official EFQM Assessors.

To gain the certificate, the group undertook a two-day course which provides participants with theoretical and practical in-depth experience of assessing an organisation with the EFQM Excellence Model. During group exercises, a case study is used that mirrors a real recognised for excellence submission document to simulate real-life assessing conditions for the group exercises.

We would like to thank Angela Howarth (Head of membership services) and Fiona Liddell (Account Director) from Quality Scotland for delivering the assessment process.

Find out more about our Commitment to Quality