Improving our services through monitoring and evaluation

Evaluate our services at least once every two years

• Work out a range of tools to evaluate our services.

Ensuring quality of victim support services requires regular evaluation. Compliance with this engagement requires victim support organisations to carry out evaluation of their services every two years. This does not imply that all services need to be evaluated at the same time, yet each part of the offered service to victims should undergo a regular biannual evaluation.

Evaluation can be internal or external. Internal evaluation can be carried out by assessment on the quality and satisfaction with services of employees, partners, general public, and victims. This evaluation can be carried out through quantitative assessment, such as questionnaires, or qualitative assessment, such as interviews or focus groups.

External evaluation refers to evaluation by an external evaluator who will develop a comprehensive methodology to look at the positive impact of an intervention and identifies the areas of improvement.

Evaluation is a cornerstone of a quality services and should thus be part of the regular activities of a victim support organisation.

• Ensure that victims’ opinions are heard and taken into account.

An essential part of evaluating a service, activity or campaign is gauging the perspective of the target group. As the primary beneficiary of any victim support service is the victim, a good evaluation should include victims’ perspectives. Strong ethical and deontological guidelines should be followed when including victims’ opinions in evaluation procedures since responses guided by social desirability, secondary victimisation or retraumatisation should be avoided at all times.

Integrating victims’ voices in the evaluation and development of services can be done in different ways. The first aspect of including voices in assessment and evaluation of offered services can be done through quantitative and qualitative measures. Quantitive measures can be in the forms of questionnaires. Qualitative measures to include voices of victims in the evaluation of victim support services can be focus groups, interviews, participatory action research.

The second aspect of a true participatory approach to victims is taking their views into account when developing services and projects.

Have in place a complaint system, which enables victims to give feedback and seek redress

• Work out a complaint system for victims.

High quality services for victims of crime include a complaint system as an integral part of their structure. Victims are coming to victim support services to receive high quality care and should have the opportunity to place a complaint about the support they were provided with. A low threshold and qualitative complaint procedure build on the following principles: victim-oriented, visibility, accessibility, responsiveness, objectivity and fairness, confidentiality, remedy, review, accountability and continuous improvement.

The first principle of victim-oriented complaint procedure is key to protect the victim from secondary victimisation and further harm. Accessibility of the process for making a complaint can be facilitated by making the complaints procedure easy to access and understand. Following, the responsiveness of complaint procedures should be ensured by making sure a victim’s complaint is acknowledged quickly, addressed with the least possible delay and that the victim is informed throughout the procedure. Furthermore victims’ complaints should be shown to be treated in an objective, equitable, unbiased. Personal information related to complaints is kept confidential – this in a system that is separate from the data kept and shared within the organisatioin. The outcome of the complaints procedure should allow for potential remedy to the victim and should inform a constant improvement of the services.

• Provide victims with information about the complaint system.

In order to make a complaint system functional and fair, the principle of visibility is fundamental. Concretely victim support organisations should raise awareness and provide information about how and where to complain. This means that staff, volunteers, and victims receive simple and accessible information on the complaint procedures.

Evidence to prove the standard has been put into practice

• Evaluation tools
• Update and summary of evaluation
• Complaint strategy and procedure
• Information tools for victims to learn about complaints procedures

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