On 5th October 2017 Paula Valentine, an international expert from Save the Children, facilitated a one-day workshop at the Hotel International Prishtina with representatives from different organisations in Lipjan Municipality. The aim of the workshop was to introduce participants to ‘Community Score Cards’ (CSCs) and to discuss with them whether or not they were interested in developing a CSC for use in their municipality. Participants included PHC managers, doctors and nurses, local NGOs -PRAK, KOPF, Polis, Mundesia.
What is the CSC?
The CSC is a participatory and social accountability tool for assessment, planning, monitoring and evaluation of services. It brings together the demand side (service user) and the supply side (service provider) of a particular service or program to jointly analyze issues underlying service delivery problems and find a common and shared way of addressing those issues. It is an essential way to increase participation, accountability and transparency between service users, providers and decision makers.
Why use a CSC?
CSCs can be used to:
- Help health service providers find out what is working well and what needs to be improved
- Monitor and improve the quality of services, facilities, projects etc.
- Track inputs (eg. the availability of drugs, staff or equipment at a facility)
- Compare functioning, performance and satisfaction across facilities, or across municipalities
- Empower and strengthen the voice of the community
Participants were very active in the workshop and the event concluded with an agreement that Lipjan would like to work with AQH to develop a CSC for PHC in Kosovo and that this would then be piloted in their municipality.
Although CSCs are used in a number of other countries worldwide they have not, so far, been used anywhere else in the region – so this would be a new initiative, not just in Kosovo, but in the region as well.
A follow-up workshop is planned for 1st December 2017 to make more detailed plans about how the CSC will be developed and then piloted in Lipjan.