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Abstract:
This paper describes the quality assurance system for long-term care services in Latvia. Policy planning for long-term care is undertaken by the Ministry of Welfare and the municipalities. Monitoring takes place at three levels: by the ministry, the municipalities and social service providers themselves. The legislation sets out requirements for social service providers and the evaluation of quality standards against a few criteria. The degree to which institutions attain the quality standards is assessed in three-level rating system (on the satisfaction of requirements), but the qualitative results are not publicly available. During 2011, a new system was developed and introduced for social service providers to evaluate the quality of their services themselves. This new self-evaluation system is based on the Common Assessment Framework of the European Institute of Public Administration, and provides comparable quality indicators across social service providers. At present, selfevaluation is voluntary, but in light of its superiority compared with the existing system for monitoring quality, self-evaluation is expected to replace it.
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