The Helplines Standard
The Helplines Standard defines and accredits best practice in helpline work.
Order a copy now, or read on for information on the standard
THA has ten years of experience of developing and assessing helplines against our original Quality Standard. More than 100 helplines have been accredited to the original Quality Standard and it remains the single most widely-held standard amongst helplines (THA member survey 2010).
THA’s new Helplines Standard builds on this experience. We have added assessment for email, SMS, internet and other channels. We have emphasised the importance of strategic planning and partnerships which are essential for the sustainability of helplines. Yet we have also simplified the process and reduced the cost of assessment, by reducing the number of criteria and allowing online submission of evidence.
Most standards look at activities across an organisation and miss out the specific demands of helpline work. Some are limited to a single topic such as information provision, advice, housing or mental health. The Helplines Standard is the only Standard that is specific to helpline activity but can be used for any helpline in the UK and Ireland, whether it is being delivered by the voluntary, public or commercial sector.
Using the Standard as a self-assessment tool
If your helpline is relatively new or in need of some development, then you can use The Helplines Standard to assess your current practice and identify areas for improvement.
The Helplines Standard comes as a 120-page ring binder which sets out all of the criteria in relation to best practice and provides extensive guidance.
The ring binder costs from £99 including delivery (THA full members in the voluntary sector). To order a copy, click here.
Benefits of accreditation
Accreditation with the Helplines Standard gives your service an external stamp of approval which:
- strengthens future proposals and tenders to funders and commissioners
- gives potential helpline users confidence when they contact you
- assures other organisations about the quality of your service when they are signposting or referring their own clients
- formally recognises the good practice that you and your colleagues follow.
Support before external assessment
If you are interested in external assessment, you are likely to need some individual support. We can provide a telephone consultation with you (or a teleconference with you and relevant colleagues) where we respond to the specific questions that you have, clarify criteria and requirements and suggest types and sources of evidence that you may wish to consider. This will help you to identify what practices you need to put into place and then implement these so that you are ready for assessment.
The support aims to save you valuable time during the assessment process and smooth the path to accreditation.
The fee for this is from £249 + VAT (full voting members). To access this support, please contact Mark McLean at mark.mclean@helplines.org.uk
External assessment leading to accreditation
When you think you have all the relevant practices in place and are ready, then contact us and we will set up an agreement for assessment.
When you have signed this, we will give you access to the special online software and you can start to submit documentary evidence, which is the first stage of the assessment. We give you up to six months to do this.
The subsequent stages comprise telephone interviews, sample contacts and observation visits. This takes around four months.
Assessment fees vary according to the number of sites, channels and services being assessed. For a single-site, single-service assessment for one channels (e.g. telephone), the fee for a full voting member is £2,475 + VAT plus assessor expenses.
If you meet all the criteria, then you will be accredited for a three-year period and you may display The Helplines Standard logo on your promotional materials during this period. We will contact you for an update during the second year to help you prepare for re-accreditation.
If you do not meet all the criteria, there is an opportunity to submit additional evidence within a set timescale. If your additional evidence meets the criteria, then your service can be accredited.
For more information about external assessment, contact Mark McLean on mark.mclean@helplines.org.uk
Which helplines are accredited by THA?
Helplines that are currently accredited include:
The Helplines Standard
- Ask Brook
- Cancer Research UK
- Child Law Advice Line
- Community Advice & Listening Line (CALL)
- Family Support Helpline
- Family Lives (Parentline)
- Meningitis Research Foundation
- Men's Advice Line
- Message Home
- Myeloma Infoline
- Pet Bereavement Support Service
- Respect Phoneline
- Runaway Helpline
- Single Parent Helpline
- Wales Drug and Alcohol Helpline (DAN 24/7)
- YoungMinds Parents Helpline
THA Quality Standard
- Alzheimer's Society
- Arthritis Care
- Breast Cancer Care
- British Dyslexia Association
- British Lung Foundation
- Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland
- Connect
- Contact a Family
- Epilepsy Society
- Family Rights Group
- Fosterline
- Get Connected
- Irish Cancer Society
- Lone Parent Helpline
- Lymphoma Association
- MABS (Money Advice and Budgeting Service) Ireland
- MS Society
- National Autistic Society
- North Derbyshire Women's Aid
- National Domestic Violence Helpline Parentline
- Parkinson's UK
- SSAFA Confidential Support Line
- Turn2Us
- Voice
- Wales Domestic Abuse Helpline
What recently accredited helplines say
The Advice Line nurses at Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland are delighted that we have just achieved THA's Quality Standard, the first helpline in the UK to be accredited for the fourth time. We find the process to be rigorous and detailed. It helps us to clarify and know our responsibilities and boundaries, and it ensures we keep our policies and practice up to the 'gold standard' set by THA. The Standard provides our Advice Line with recognition, and our callers with confidence, that we are striving for and achieving a standard of excellence in care and service to all who call us.
Laura Hastings, Lead Advice Line Nurse, Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland
The MABS Helpline opened in September 2007. From the outset, our commitment has been to focus on quality and we believe that we have always lived up to this commitment. However, we felt we had no real benchmarks to measure against. We operate in a totally different way to all of our colleagues. Their interaction with clients is mainly face to face while ours is at a remove, via phone, email or text. The Quality Standard offered us the opportunity to benchmark ourselves against industry standards. We are pleased to have completed the process and to have shown that we meet the Standard's exacting requirements. It shows that we have a sound business model and it underscores our commitment to quality.
Sean Malone, Money Advice and Budgeting Service (MABS), Republic of Ireland
We are delighted that the Lymphoma Association helpline has been re-accredited with the Quality Standard. It was so important for us to revisit every element of the helpline service including promotion of the service, monitoring and evaluation, policies and procedures and general business expectations. All members of the team were involved. Retaining the Standard proves to our funders and users of our service that our helpline is quality assured and committed to ongoing improvement.
Ros Redding, Head of Patient Services, Lymphoma Association
When we started to work towards the Quality Standard, we thought that it would be a way of demonstrating the quality of the helpline service that we offer, but we were not fully aware of how helpful the process would be for us as a team. It gave us framework to look at all aspects of the work that we do and a reason to take time out from the day to day work to really think about how and why we do things in a certain way. All members of the team were involved which was a really useful team building exercise that led to us making a number of changes to how we operate.
Tim Moore, Advisory Service Manager, Parkinson's UK