Amaze is now Advice Quality Standard accredited

Amaze wants to be the best we can be in how we offer you information and advice. So we are delighted to share that in June, Amaze was awarded the Advice Quality Standard (AQS)  for both “welfare benefits” and “disability”. AQS is the recognised national quality standard for voluntary sector advice services.

To get the accreditation, we had to demonstrate we give accurate, reliable advice (of course), and have high standards of customer care, but also that we are a really well-run organisation in terms of finance, management, staffing and more. The assessment looked at our values and policies, things like confidentiality and looking after your data, safeguarding and equalities. It checked whether we have the right policies – but more importantly, whether we act on them in practice.

Ros Cook, Amaze’s Services Director, who oversaw the process, says:

“We got through the challenging paper stage, but were still a bit nervous before the assessor’s visit at the end of May. We shouldn’t have worried. Our assessor was lovely and understood how we work. She passed us with flying colours! There were no areas for improvement and 12 features of good practice around access to and running of the service, commitment to quality, the management of people and Amaze as an organisation.

“We are proud to add the AQS logo to our website and celebrate the brilliant Amaze team who got us there. With this quality mark we are better placed to keep our DLA and PIP work funded, a service we know parents and young people value enormously. It has already helped us secure funds to sustain this service in East Sussex for the immediate future.  Now we just need to keep our standards up for the reassessment in two years’ time.”