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Applying the EQUASS quality standard in a social care institution: experiences of personal care workers, S-ST-23-24

Project No S-ST-23-24

Project title: ‘Applying the EQUASS quality standard in a social care institution: experiences of personal care workers’

Project duration: 2023-10-03 2024-04-30

Project leader: Prof. Dr. Valdonė Indrašienė

Student: Reda Steniukynienė

About the project: With the increasing number of elderly and disabled people and the aim of helping people to live in their own homes for as long as possible, the availability of social services is being increased, which provides more care and support to individuals. The demographic and economic situation leads to different demands on individual and societal expectations of the quality, quantity and accessibility of social services (Andrijauskaitė, 2015). Therefore, there is a need to assess the quality of social services both in inpatient institutions and in the person’s home. The study aims to uncover the experiences of personal care workers in relation to the application of the EQUASS quality standard in the provision of social services. It will seek to answer the following questions: How does the application of EQUASS quality principles ensure the quality of social services? How does the application of the EQUASS quality standard in the provision of social services change the practice of personal care workers? How do workers perceive changes in the quality of social services following the application of the EQUASS quality standard? The survey data will be collected through individual, semi-structured interviews with personal care workers. Participants will be selected using purposive sampling. Convenience sampling will be used to select the study sample, following the principle of saturation (5-7 individual interviews are planned). The content analysis will be carried out using the specialised programming software QDA Miner Lite.

The project is funded by the Lithuanian Research Council within the framework of the Student Research Semesters programme.