Quality Assurance

The Department of Juvenile Justice established a quality assurance system whereby a contracted program can be inspected and rated to ensure compliance. By developing a Quality Assurance Manual, the Department of Juvenile Justice provided specific, standardized terminology and procedures to follow. Quality Assurance reviews provide feedback on areas that need attention and improvement as well as those that can be emulated by similar programs statewide.

The quality assurance system utilizes team approach that provides a broad and balanced perspective for program evaluation. The Quality Assurance Bureau relies on trained peer review teams to conduct an annual assessment of the program. Team members include a lead reviewer, peer reviewers, Department of Juvenile Justice counselor board members, and educators.

Program reviewers are unannounced. Reviewer’s peers evaluate the program policies, procedures, and practices to include records, files, observations, and interviews with management, staff, and clients. The findings are documents and detailed in a report to the Department of Juvenile Justice.

Performance and compliance indicators are utilized using a rating scale.

Performance and compliance indicators are utilized, using the following rating scales:

Performance indicators are based on how well a program is performing in a certain area using a ten-point scale. Compliance indicators are based on whether the program’s policies, procedures, and practices conform to Department of Juvenile Justice policy. The rating is either “compliance” or “noncompliance.”