HISTORY OF HaSCAF

UKAF was founded in June 1998 by a group of healthcare accreditation organisations, including national, regional, generic and specialty programmes. It changed its name to HaSCAF (Health and Social Care Accreditation Forum) in 2012. The HaSCAF website is hosted by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) which participates in the Forum.

The aim of the Health and Social Care Accreditation Forum is to provide an effective network of organisations which operate or have a practical interest in developing standards-based quality assessment and accreditation programmes in health and social care, including those (e.g. inspection programmes) which review services or clinical pathways against defined standards, but do not certify or accredit compliance with the standards.

The Forum meets quarterly in London, hosted in rotation by member organisations. Meetings involve discussion of current healthcare quality issues, presentations from representatives of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), NHS England (NHSE), the Care Quality Commission (CQC), their equivalents in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and by UKAS. In addition, there is in-depth discussion on all aspects of quality assessment and accreditation programmes such as standards development, assessment methodologies, the training of assessors and peer reviewers, and the utilisation of scoring systems in inspection systems and in awarding certification and accreditation.

The mapping of accreditation and similar quality assessment programmes in Europe began during the European Union (EU) research project on External Peer Review Techniques (ExPeRT) in 1997. A profile of voluntary UK programmes was published as a promotional brochure and circulated to the then Department of Health (DH), the Medical Royal Colleges and chief executives in the NHS in 1999, with little evident effect on uptake. Most of the UK programmes included in this brochure have participated in the Forum at some time, some are continuing members, and other organisations have joined the Forum in the last 10 years.