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This paper demonstrates how a single assessment tool can be linked to intermediate care services eligibility criteria to examine referrals and admissions to these services, by reporting on a project in a locality in East Kent. The project involved implementing a standardised patient assessment tool for three months in all intermediate care services, to examine the suitability of patients entering each of these intermediate care services. This paper focuses on the results of the community assessment rehabilitation team (CART), a recuperative care centre and the day hospital. After analysing patient assessments, we found that some patients in all intermediate care services were placed there inappropriately, and this was most evident in the day hospital. The paper concludes with considerations and suggestions for improving the effectiveness of assessment tools in practice.

Looks at New Zealand’s provision for the disabled. Reports on evidence from observation of the actual assessment process. Empirical data are used about the perceptions of both the assessors and the clients. Determines whether the stated aims of government policy are achieved. Appears that assessment is now fairer and provides for greater dignity and choice for clients. However, there is still room for improvement.

This study aims to improve the efficiency of the assessment process within a Step4 Psychological Therapies Service by identifying factors related to assessment non-attendance and service suitability for referred clients.

Referral and assessment information was accessed between October 2019 and March 2020 from Step4 routine service data, electronic client records where necessary and Step4 staff self-report questionnaires.

All clients offered an assessment during this time attended. Findings indicated several factors could influence service suitability in meeting client need. These included individual differences such as readiness to change, which was not necessarily identified at referral or prior to assessment, and potential systemic factors, such as the opt-in procedure, which possibly impeded access. Though the necessity for assessment in clarifying client needs and treatment was indicated, an assessment (from referral to assessment appointment) that led to discharge could take an excess of one working day of service time, associated with considerable opportunity cost to other clients awaiting assessment. Recommendations are made for improving assessment efficiency.

With a high prevalence of poor mental health in the UK, efforts must be made to identify and reduce additional demand upon service time and resources within mental health services to effectively meet people’s needs. Recommendations to improve assessment process efficiency include the use of a standardised referral form, offer of follow-up support procedures, increased client involvement, a streamlined opt-in battery and ongoing monitoring to ensure shared practice between clinicians. These are transferable to other mental health services, with implications for subsequent quality and timeliness of care.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to investigate the epistemological underpinning of SERVQUAL and its limitations; and second, to propose ways to enhance the utility of SERVQUAL as a library assessment tool.

The study first conceptualises quality judgment as a knowing process and locates the epistemological stance of SERVQUAL within the general framework of epistemology demarcation; it then examines related SERVQUAL assumptions and their implications for library assessment in general and for service quality assessment in particular based on two empirical investigations: a questionnaire survey and an interview survey. The questionnaire survey applies the SERVQUAL instrument to three Chinese university libraries, with a view to examining the SERVQUAL score in light of epistemological considerations; the interview survey interviews 50 faculty users in one of the three universities with a view to illuminating the naturalistic process through which users develop their judgement of the library's service quality and through which the SERVQUAL score is formed.

The study shows that the actual SERVQUAL score is distributed in a very scattered manner in all three libraries, and that it is formed through a very complex process rooted primarily in the user's personal experiences with the library, which are in turn shaped by factors from both the library world and the user's life‐world. Based on these findings, this research questions a number of SERVQUAL assumptions and proposes three concepts which may help to contextualise the SERVQUAL score and enhance its utility in actual library assessment: library planning based variance of user perception, perception‐dependent user expectation and library‐sophistication based user differentiation.

The research presented in the paper questions a number of SERVQUAL assumptions and proposes three concepts that may help to contextualise the SERVQUAL score and enhance its utility in actual library assessment.

Parents whose children have undergone an autism assessment often describe the process as extremely stressful. This affects how parents engage with services post-diagnosis, meaning less likelihood of using subsequent service support despite struggling to cope. Since parents already report many barriers to accessing services, e.g. long waiting lists, lack of co-ordination and limited resources (Sapiets et al. 2023), negative experiences during assessment should not pose another potential barrier to engagement. This study aimed to address how families’ needs can be better met during the assessment process.

In this qualitative study, the author conducted semi-structured interviews with 11 parents whose child had undergone an autism assessment in the last five years. Thematic analysis determined key themes.

The six themes were: clarity and communication, access to support and resources, aftercare, recognition of parent concerns, personalisation of the assessment process and concerns around the use of personal protective equipment/online assessments. These themes led to criteria to assess the quality of autism assessment services in line with parent perspectives.

These parent-informed criteria could facilitate the consideration of parents’ views into service evaluations of autism assessment services across the UK.

Previous research indicates that the autism assessment experience is often extremely stressful and overwhelming for families (Crane et al., 2016). Despite this, guidance to improve autism services rarely prioritises the opinions and experiences of service-users and their families. The criteria presented here were derived from themes identified by interviewing parents on their experiences of the autism assessment process, thus shifting the focus onto service-users.

There is a concerning disparity between students with disabilities and their peers without disabilities in their long-term, postsecondary outcomes. The former group tends to have a variety of poorer outcomes in important domains of life, such as employment, postsecondary education, independent living, and community participation. Policymakers, scholars, and the general public alike have called attention to this issue, resulting in both legal mandates and research on evidence-based practices in the area of transition services. While the law requires individualized, results-oriented transition services based upon age-appropriate transition assessment and a number of evidence-based transition practices and predictors have been identified, studies of individualized education programs and practices have revealed a significant underuse of best practices in transition assessment and services. In this chapter, we discuss the importance of comprehensive transition assessment as a foundation for setting postsecondary goals and designing services that best fit individual student strengths and needs and best prepare students to be successful in their adult lives. Further, we provide an overview of current recommendations for best practices in planning, conducting, and interpreting transition assessments, and offer suggestions for areas where further research is needed.

This paper aims to describe three dementia assessment services for people with intellectual disabilities to provide professionals with insight into planning this type of service.

Three services in England were contacted via email and telephone to collect data on their service provision. They were asked about the average age of individuals when receiving a baseline assessment, frequency of follow-up assessment, assessment instruments used and descriptive aspects of their services.

All three services offered proactive dementia assessment services to people with Down's syndrome (DS), with one service providing systematic screening via the GP. None offered proactive screening to people with intellectual disabilities who did not have a diagnosis of DS. All offered reactive assessment to this population if they experienced a decline in function. Services differed in terms of age at which baseline assessments were offered, frequency of follow-up and instruments used.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to compare dementia assessment provision between different services in England.

This paper aims to survey the published journal literature on reference transaction assessment. Its purpose is to highlight the need for a multiple perspectives approach due to the complexity of reference transactions. Satisfaction indicators, behavioral aspects, accuracy rates, success measures, and other desired transaction outcomes contribute to the need for a broader assessment picture.

This is a review from the first decade of the twenty‐first century. Selected were papers from 2001 through 2010, filtered from search results from library literature databases. Primary inclusion criteria identified refereed papers, studies of academic library populations, evaluation or assessment of reference transactions, and methods contributing to systematic practices versus unique assessment events.

By viewing reference transactions as complex interactions, librarians are recognizing that simple counts and narrow views of assessment are not adequate. Missing in the assessment literature is a universally accepted set of standard approaches, study methodologies, and reporting formats for comparison and analysis. Improvements may contribute to efforts that go beyond local studies to more meaningful peer comparisons.

Although not an exhaustive representation of all reference services assessment literature, the paper profiles the heart of reference, i.e. the interaction between users and library service providers. This focus fosters a concentration on a core reference activity: addressing library users' information needs.

This review highlights assessment challenges, unresolved problems, and topics addressed from 2001 to 2010. It also provides a look at tools that can enhance assessment programs.

In the UK, there are around 1.5 million carers of people with mental health problems providing substantial amounts of free care. Despite having a legal right to a ‘carer's assessment’, only a minority of mental health carers have had such an assessment. To try and understand why the uptake is so low, we undertook a small (n = 8) qualitative study exploring what mental health staff acting as ‘care co‐ordinators’ thought the barriers to, and facilitators of, carers' assessments might be, and how subsequent practice might be improved.We found that there was some confusion over the definition of ‘carer’ and over who should take responsibility for carer assessments. The main barriers to carers' assessments were the documentation used, the attitudes of staff (especially managers) and the fact that the needs of mental health carers often differed from those caring for people with a physical disability. Practice could be improved through: clarifying the definition of ‘carer’; education and training; redesigning the documentation; dovetailing service user and carer needs assessments; and through offering a wider choice of evidence‐based services as assessment outcomes. Improvements are unlikely to be successful, however, without the active support, expertise and engagement of carers.

The purpose of this paper is to study the EFQM model self‐assessment in a Spanish university.

A case study methodology is used based on five services provided by a public university in Spain.

The findings show the steps that one university can follow in order to apply this exercise in a successful manner, its benefits, its obstacles and its key factors such as management and employee commitment, and the support to self‐assessment teams (e.g. training, review).

The paper provides lessons for managers from other universities who wish to develop a self‐assessment exercise.