QUAT – QUality Assessment Tool

The QUAT – Quality Assessment Tool is a free and accessible tool for practitioners, parents, and communities to jointly measure and improve the quality of formal and non-formal services where children and young people spend their time.

Ensuring quality in services is essential for children’s and young people’s well-being and healthy development. With the QUAT, measuring quality is not just a mere assessment but also an essential moment of awareness raising and transformation for professionals, caregivers, stakeholders (and children). Through the QUAT, all stakeholders better understand what quality is and what it entails, build shared ownership of and commitment to the service, and agree on joint actions for quality improvement.

The QUAT was developed by ICDI starting from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and international research on quality and after a testing phase in more than 10 countries worldwide (2010). It identifies six dimensions of quality:

  • 1) Agency
  • 2) Child friendliness
  • 3) Connectedness
  • 4) Safety, health, and protection
  • 5) Staffing and HR
  • 6) Sustainability.

The QUAT facilitates an open and ongoing discussion, where contextual variables, inputs from all stakeholders, values, visions, and dreams all have a place.

The QUAT has been adapted for use in a wide variety of contexts, services, and ages. Early childhood and education settings, free play provisions, youth-friendly health services, and integrated services, are examples of different settings for which the QUAT can and has been adapted.

This is a list of the adapted versions of the QUAT available:

  • ECD-QUAT (to measure the quality of services for young children)
  • ECD-QUAT for Play Hubs (to measure the quality of the services provided in the TOY for Inclusion Play Hubs and other inclusive non-formal ECEC services)
  • ECD-QUAT for Free Play Provisions (to measure the quality of formal and non-formal ECEC services supporting free play)
  • QUAT for Integration of Services (to measure the extent of cross-sectoral knowledge, practice, and values among services working for children’s well-being in different sectors)
  • ECD-QUAT for Toy Libraries (to measure the quality of the services provided in the toy libraries)
  • Youth QUAT (to measure the quality of non-formal services for young people)
  • Girls QUAT (to measure the quality of services for girls and young women)

If you are interested in learning more about the QUAT and applying it, ICDI can provide a QUAT training to your organisation. Please visit our Training page for more information.