Highlights from the sixth ASEE Breakfast Meeting
How can Supported Employment organisations show the quality of their work, and keep improving it? At our sixth Breakfast Meeting, members and guests explored the Supported Employment Quality Framework (SEQF), a quality label that helps organisations across Europe do exactly that.
What is SEQF?
SEQF grew out of an Erasmus+ project in 2017 and was developed further by ASEE experts. It is now officially recognised in the UK, Flanders (Belgium) and Norway, with growing interest elsewhere. Miriam Reyskens, ASEE Project Officer, explained that it is built on the 12 core values and principles of supported employment and has two parts:
- Enablers: the organisational foundations, including leadership, strategy, staff management, and partnerships and resources.
- Model Fidelity: how well an organisation follows the five stages of supported employment, from engaging jobseekers to in-work support, and how it uses data to measure results.
A journey, not an audit
Certification is designed as a process of learning. Organisations assess themselves, create a growth and development plan, and receive a visit from an external assessor who acts as a “critical friend”. After accreditation, they revisit their plan after one year to review progress. The focus is on improvement, not just on a score.
Lessons from the UK
Nerise Oldfield-Thompson of the British Association from Supported Employment (BASE) shared ten years of UK experience, including more than 100 assessments. One service improved from 8% to over 80% in a single year, and UK employers increasingly prefer to work with SEQF-certified services. Her practical tips:
- Base decisions on data, not guesses. Even a simple spreadsheet can work.
- Involve your staff and keep investing in their training.
- Ask your customers for feedback every year, and use it to improve.
- Appoint a lead, schedule everything and document as you go.
Voices from practice
Participants confirmed that SEQF pays off over time. Rut Kelchtermans from Synkroon (Belgium), who has used it for over five years, said it becomes part of how job coaches think, that quality needs the whole team, and that the second cycle is easier than the first. Norman Sterritt from NIUSE (Northern Ireland) noted that organisations are at different stages, and that persuading decision-makers and funders remains the main challenge.
Why it matters
SEQF gives our sector a shared language for quality, and it is gaining momentum across Europe. As the EU guidelines on supported employment take shape, that shared language matters more than ever.