The APS was developed by the Mentoring and Befriending Foundation with support from the Home Office. It is a benchmark for organisations providing one-to-one, volunteer mentoring or befriending and it seeks to provide projects with a badge of competence and safe practice in mentoring or befriending.

The scheme was approved in July 2006 and re-accredited in July 2009, and was valid until July 2012.

In 2006 the following were particular points of note highlighted by the assessor and validator for our project:

"Your application form and portfolio of evidence were both exceptionally thorough and gave clear indication in every area that your project has given due thought to safe and effective practice and that it has developed policies and systems in response to this. In fact your application was assessed as being amongst the best seen over a number of years by the very experienced external assessor.

We feel that it is of huge credit to Shetland Befriending Scheme that the award has been achieved with such a high standard of application, when the scheme does not have the immdiate access to other projects available to those in other parts of the country. Your project has clearly learned both from experience, from internal and external evaluation and indead from the process of applying for the Approved Provider Standard, as there is evidence of changes in practice and directions in development that have resulted from these."

Befriending Networks (previously named Befriending Network Scotland) has now launched a new quality award for befriending projects called: 'Quality in Befriending' (QiB). The standards outlined in the new award link closely to the BNS Befriending Code of Practice and and to the credit-rated Vital Skills in Befriending training course. Projects can achieve QiB at one of two levels:

Quality in Befriending Award (ie, they have demonstrated Safe & Competent Practice)
Quality in Befriending Excellence (ie, they have demonstrated Good Practice)

QiB will assess the core work of befriending projects and does not aim to assess the wider organisation. The Practice Areas covered by QiB will be:

client referrals, assessments and waiting lists
volunteer recruitment, assessment and selection
volunteer training
matching
reviews and ongoing support for clients and befrienders
endings
risk management and safety
project resources
monitoring & evaluation, and implementing change

In 2012 the scheme worked towards the Quality in Befriending (QiB) Quality in Befriending Award via Befriending Networks and they submitted their portfolio in November 2012 for formal assessment. The scheme hopes to hear in early 2013 the outcome.

Further information about this can be found at: http://www.befriending.co.uk/quality-awards.php

Volunteer Friendly Award

The Volunteer Friendly Award is a simple, user-friendly quality standard designed by Volunteer Centre Dundee to support, recognise and reward groups who are good at involving volunteers. Volunteer Friendly helps projects take a systematic look at what they do and how they do it. It offers a flexible approach which allows projects to work at their own pace, with full support from their local Volunteer Centre. It is based on the national standard Investing in Volunteers (IiV) but is designed for small organisations which may not be ready to undertake IiV yet, or which may be looking for a stepping stone towards IiV.

Volunteer Friendly involves working through a checklist of best practice, organised into five strands. This produces an action plan to help you to develop a portfolio of evidence showing the quality of your work with volunteers.

The five strands are:

*Commitment to Involving Volunteers

*Making Volunteering Happen

*Fair and Equal Volunteering

*Volunteering Tasks & Getting Them Done

*Celebrating Volunteers’ Contributions

The Shetland Befriending Scheme have successfully achieved the Volunteer Friendly Award in February 2013 and are delighted with this achievement. The award is valid for 3 years until February 2016.