CQC reveals new social care inspection plans

9 Oct 14

The Care Quality Commission has today issued new guidance on the regulation of care homes and community adult social care in England.

 

Its new handbook describe how care providers will be assessed and rated.

Specialist teams, including trained members of the public (called ‘experts by experience’) will inspect services, unannounced, against whether they safe, caring, effective, responsive to needs, and well-led.

Inspection teams will also be explicitly asked to consider whether services are of a standard they would consider acceptable for their own family members.

Services will then be rated as ‘outstanding’, ‘good’, ‘requires improvement’ or ‘inadequate’, to help people about informed choices as to which to use.

Chief inspector of adult social care Andrea Sutcliffe said: ‘Our new regulatory model has people right at its heart. We will ask the questions that matter most to people who use services, listen to their views, take action to protect them, and provide them with clear, reliable and accessible information about the quality of their services.’

The CQC has also reduced the number of 'key lines of enquiry' that inspection teams use and has sought to remove jargon from them to make them intelligible to the public.

It will publish guidance later this month on the use of surveillance for health and adult social care providers,

Care and support minister Norman Lamb said publication of the handbooks marked ‘a turning point for the way we care for people in this country’.

He added: ‘Gone is the tick-box exercise for inspecting care homes and home care – now we are listening to the views of the people who rely on these services and have tougher checks to make sure they are getting safe, compassionate care from staff who are supported by good managers.’

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