Quality Assurance
This page explains how we make sure the information, resources, and training we provide are safe, inclusive, and based on trustworthy information.
What evidence and expertise do we use at Charlie Waller?
Our website, resources, and training are informed by a range of trusted sources. These include national guidance and frameworks, research, clinical expertise, lived experience voices, and feedback from the people who use our resources and attend our trainings, including parents, carers, education professionals, and young people. This helps us keep our work relevant, useful, and up to date.
The strength of the evidence varies across different areas of mental health. Where there is less research available, we draw on the best available evidence alongside clinical expertise, lived experience, and learning from practice.
What is the difference between ‘evidence based’ and ‘best available evidence’?
When we describe our training, resources or website content as evidence-based, we mean content is based on robust research and recognised professional guidance. This includes studies that have thoroughly tested what works, as well as recommendations from trusted national and international guidance. This gives us confidence that the information and approaches we share are likely to be helpful and effective.
When we describe something as based on the best available evidence, we mean that we have used the strongest and most relevant information currently available but recognise that this is not yet at the highest levels of evidence (see Vatkar et al. (2025) for an example of the research hierarchy in evidence-based medicine). The best available evidence may include research, learning from practice, and the views of people with lived experience. This wording is used where the research is still developing, or where it would not be accurate to describe something as fully evidence based.
Our quality assurance process
Quality assurance means checking that our information, resources, and training are safe, accurate, accessible, and suitable for the people they are designed to support. Our quality assurance process involves the following:
Our trainers are quality assured every year by our Clinical Lead, and anyone delivering public-facing content is also DBS checked.
Our resources and training materials are reviewed every two years by our Clinical Lead and/or CEO, with support from our Mental Health Trainers and clinicians working at the Charlie Waller Institute, to ensure that they are accurate, clinically sound, and appropriate.
If there are significant changes to guidance, law, policy, or best practice, we will review and update the relevant materials sooner.
Lived experience, inclusion, and accessibility
We believe that our resources and training should be shaped by the people that they are designed to support. Across our organisation, we involve young people and parent carers in a range of projects and activities, including our quality assurance reviews. Their insights help us check whether our work feels relevant, respectful, and useful in real life.
We also apply an equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) lens to our work. This helps us consider whether the language, examples, design, and delivery style are accessible to different communities and experiences, and where we need to continue to develop our approach.
We aim to make our printed and digital resources as accessible as possible, taking account of relevant accessibility requirements and recognised good practice. Where applicable, this includes requirements under the European Accessibility Act (EAA). We support this through clear and inclusive language, accessible design, and a continued focus on ease of use across our website and materials. If you experience any accessibility barriers when using our website or resources, or need information in a different format, please get in touch with us via our Contact Us form.
Signposting to support
Where we signpost to other services or sources of support, we aim to only include options that are funded to promote access for all.
While we take care to ensure that the organisations to which we signpost provide high-quality information and advice, we cannot take responsibility for any specific advice or guidance they may offer. We encourage parents and carers always to explore the website of a linked service or organisation to understand who they are and what support they offer before engaging with them.