Quality & Governance

Community Action Norfolk is a registered charity and company limited by guarantee.  

Our board of trustees have overall responsibility for the organisation with day to day activities delegated to the Chief Executive and staff team. Our trustees are directly elected by our membership.

Community Action Norfolk views high quality services as core to its organisational approach.

Community Action Norfolk trustees and management recognise high quality services as essential in delivering benefit under its charitable purpose as well as in demonstrating value to funders and stakeholders. 

• We place particular emphasis on quality by:
• Gathering user feedback and setting benchmarks for that feedback within our workplans.
• Clearly identifying and developing team member competencies.
• Ensuring all team members are well trained and have a positive attitude to ongoing professional development
• Building positive relationships with clients and partners. 
• Continued commitment to innovation and developing new initiatives and best practice.
• Commitment to overall performance and quality management.
• Understanding uncertainty and managing risk and opportunities proactively

Community Action Norfolk has recognised the need for continual improvement of its quality management activities and does this by:

• Having quality as a standing issue within the board agenda
• Using a quality group to monitor quality within the organisation
• Maintaining a continuous development plan
• Monitoring and evaluating user feedback, consultation and needs analysis to ensure are services meet identified needs in a high quality and effective manner. 

The commitment to quality is also referenced in the organisations ethos (within the competency framework) and within the business plan, (under organisational strategy). Delivery quality forms a key component of our performance management system with the explicit statement:

“we must ensure that the quality of the support we provide is of the highest standards and that it is regarded as such by the groups with which we work.”

To support our internal quality assurance and performance management systems, Community Action Norfolk maintains accreditation with the following quality standards:

ISO 9001 certification 

ISO 9001 accreditation is an internationally recognised standard for quality management based around seven principles:

• Customer focus
• Leadership
• Engagement of people
• Process approach
• Improvement
• Evidence based decision-making
• Relationship Management

Community Action Norfolk is accredited by ACM ltd 

ACRE Charity Commission endorsed quality standard

This covers nine areas of organisational performance:

• Business planning
• User-centred service
• Trustees and the Board
• Managing activities
• Financial management and annual reporting
• Monitoring and evaluation
• Managing and supporting staff and volunteers
• Training and skills development
• Networks and partnerships

Community Action Norfolk is accredited at level 3, the highest level. Reports are available via the ACRE website