ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the issues around quality, audit and standards and how a safety culture can be encouraged.
Quality is very difficult to measure and the meaning of the word varies depending upon your own perspective. Managers, staff and parents all have different priorities in the assessment of quality because of the different roles they have in the early years setting. There is no single, comprehensive indicator of a quality service, though one of the bestknown theoretical models is Maxwell’s division into six dimensions of effectiveness, efficiency, equity, acceptability, accessibility and appropriateness (Maxwell 1984).
