Community COPE: Building Partnership with the Community to Improve Health Services

EngenderHealth's COPE® (Client-Oriented, Provider-Efficient services) is a set of tools intended to assist providers and supervisors with evaluation of the care offered in clinic and hospital settings. Using self-assessment, client interviews, client-flow analysis and facilitated discussion, staff are taught to identify areas needing attention and develop their own solutions and action plans to address the issues. Originally developed for family planning services, healthcare providers from related disciplines requested that the tools be adapted to a wider range of health services.

The Community COPE® handbook is designed to help supervisors and staff at service delivery sites build bridges with community members. The manual provides information on assessing how community members feel about the services being provided, gathering recommendations for improving services, and encouraging community members to participate in quality improvement efforts both at the site and community levels. Specific tools include interview and focus group discussion guides, participatory mapping exercises, a site walk-through guide, tools for analysing and prioritising solutions to problems, and guides for orienting site staff and local leaders to the process. Piloted in East Africa, the approach is being implemented in West Africa and the Dominican Republic.