IETP audit partners on track to achieve APSCA registration

Audit quality is at the heart of the ICTI Ethical Toy Program (IETP), our entire team is dedicated to providing comprehensive, consistent and reliable social compliance assessments to advance working conditions for toy factory workers. We expect all our accredited third-party audit partners to adhere to the highest standards of professional ethics, credibility, and competence. Supporting APSCA’s developmentIETP and APSCA (Association of Professional Social Compliance Auditors) share the same vision; both organizations recognize the importance of improving confidence in, and quality of, social audits as well as the individuals and organizations who are conducting audits. IETP has provided support to APSCA since the launch of the initiative, members of our senior leadership team, Carmel Giblin (CEO and President) and Mark Robertson (SVP, Communications & Stakeholder Engagement), have actively participated in working groups to develop various aspects of the APSCA requirements, and shared best practice and insights from IETP’s own auditing program. IETP’s accredited audit firms are APSCA membersIETP has carefully selected a panel of four audit firms to conduct audits for our certification program, provide a trusted, high-quality audit process and report to factories and our stakeholders. All four IETP accredited firms have become APSCA member firms, three of them are founding members of the initiative.APSCA registration number included in IETP audit reportsIETP sees auditor quality and competency as core elements to our certification program. While the auditor assignment process in our audit program will remain as it is – the audit firm for each audit is randomly assigned by IETP – we are pleased to confirm that our audit partners are registering all of their individual auditors with APSCA and soon all IETP audits will be conducted by APSCA registered auditors. So far Elevate, SCSA, SGS and UL have completed the registrations for most of their auditors, all IETP accredited auditors are expected to be also APSCA registered soon. From 1st November, the IETP audit report will include the unique APSCA registration number of each auditor, this will clearly confirm that this auditor has met the requirements and expected competence from both IETP and APSCA. Understanding and meeting the expectations of the world’s largest buyers IETP works closely with buyers and manufacturers from across the toy industry to ensure our program continues to meet the needs of all our members and remains effective in driving standards. Our Buyer Members include Disney, Mattel, McDonald’s, Walmart, Crayola, Hallmark, Spinmaster plus many more, making IETP the world’s largest program dedicated to raising ethical standards in global toy supply chain. To learn more about APSCA please visit www.theapsca.org. If you have any enquiries regarding the ICTI Ethical Toy Program please contact info@ethicaltoyprogram.org.