Quality Enhancement

Lanterman Regional Center has undertaken a bold initiative to improve the quality of services for people with developmental disabilities. This effort to "enhance" service quality is being carried out by the Center under the auspices of the Quality Enhancement Committee and in cooperation with a volunteer group of service providers who wish to distinguish themselves by achieving a level of quality above what is required by law and regulation.

How will this activity differ from what we have done in the past?
The Regional Center routinely monitors the quality of services provided to clients receiving residential and other services. We also provide training and technical assistance to service providers to help them improve. Our monitoring activities usually focus on regulations – most often Title 17 and Title 22. These regulations are written to protect the health, safety and welfare of clients and to ensure their rights. As such, they reflect minimum standards.

Our goal for Quality Enhancement is to go significantly beyond a minimum level of quality. That is, we wish to focus on changing services in ways that "enhance" quality beyond those ordinarily required for health, safety and client welfare. Quality enhancement requires service providers to expand their knowledge and increase their skill level.

The foundation for these quality enhancement activities are based on principles espoused by The Council on Quality and Leadership in Supports for People with Disabilities. These standards focus on personal outcomes for people with disabilities, and they are heavily weighted toward consumer choice, autonomy, and the use of natural supports. While a separate set of guidelines will be developed for each service type, all sets of guidelines will share these three unifying principles.

Our goal is to develop both a network of services that will be a model for service delivery and a process that may be used to achieve a higher level of quality. These things will guide us as we expand the focus of our quality monitoring process from primarily health and safety issues to factors that will truly enhance the quality of lives of people with disabilities.