A message from James Bullion, Interim Chief Inspector of Adult Social Care and Integrated Care
We’re well into the festive season now and I want to take this opportunity to reflect on 2023, share my thanks, and consider the year ahead.
Firstly, I want to thank you, and acknowledge the pressures you've been under. It’s been another tough year for everyone working in the health and social care sectors. The cost-of-living crisis is biting harder and workforce challenges have escalated. In some cases, as we highlighted in our annual State of Care report, this is leading to an increased risk of “unfair care”, where access to and quality of care is impacted, resulting in longer waits, reduced access, and poorer outcomes for some.
2024 is a year of new approaches for CQC. By the spring, all regulation will be done against our new assessment framework. I’m grateful to the early adopter organisations who have helped us roll out the new framework effectively. Our focus on health and social care across systems grows too as we begin our programme of full assessments of all local authorities and integrated care systems in England. The aim of our systems assessments is to increase transparency and local accountability. Also to make good practice, positive outcomes and outstanding quality easier to spot locally and share nationally.
Despite significant challenges over the last 12 months, I’ve been pleased to see lots of good and outstanding care this year. We’ve been able to spotlight examples of good and innovative practice that’s helping people, and family carers, access the care and support they need to live full lives. It's really important, and in all our interests, to spread the positive messages about the great work that goes on in social care, and the difference we make in people’s lives, which gives us all our dignity.
The regulatory work we do is rooted in people’s experience of care. It’s a fundamental element of the new single assessment framework and a question we ask of both individual providers and whole systems. That remains a constant in all we – and you – do.
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A message from Dr Prem Premachandran, Emergency Medicine Consultant, Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust, and CQC Medical Director
As we come to the end of another year we will all be reflecting on what the past twelve months have looked like, and what the next twelve will bring. For those of us working in healthcare, it has been tough. Every winter we know things will be difficult and this year has been no different. There has been staff shortages, industrial action, and patient dissatisfaction to name a few.
Alongside all of this though, there has been an enormous amount of hard work. We want to take this opportunity to say thank you to everyone working in healthcare, whatever your role is. It can be difficult to find the time to recognise the effort that people are putting in when things are so busy, but it is important to acknowledge every part of the system. Whether you are providing direct care, supporting those who do, or leading services and teams, your contribution goes towards providing the best care possible to those who need it.
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 Two healthcare workings smiling with text overlaid 'The world of health and social care is changing. So are we.'
Last week we started using our new assessment approach across our South region. This is part of a staged rollout and over the next few months we'll start using our new assessment approach in other parts of the country.
What can providers do to prepare
 Image of two nurses looking at a clipboard held by the nurse on right
When we roll out our new assessment approach in your area, the relationship you have with our teams will change.
We've published a new update to describe how relationships will work.
We've published two new pieces of guidance to help providers prepare for our new assessment approach.
Overview of our assessment process
We've published a quick guide to give an overview of how assessments will work under our new approach. We want this guide to help illustrate the different parts of our assessment approach and what each will feel for providers.
The level at which we will rate
This guidance describes the levels will publish ratings for and how that differs for specific types of services. The guidance also describes how we'll aggregate ratings across different levels.
As we roll out our assessment approach we will ask providers for feedback and use it to update and develop our guidance.
Share your feedback on our 3 new pieces of guidance.
 Image of an individual holding a glass of wine
Over the last two years, the University of Bedfordshire, with CQC’s support, has been carrying out research into how care homes manage alcohol. This research included discussions with care home providers, residents, people’s families and CQC inspectors. On the 14th December, they published two good practice guidance documents based on their findings'; one for care home providers and one for people using services.
 Image of dentist holding a tool in each hand
This year, we have continued to see the hard work and dedication of dental teams across the country to provide safe, effective, and well led oral healthcare to their patients. Our aim this year, as usual, is to assess 10% of all dental practices across England and of those we’ve visited so far year, approximately 90% are doing so without the need for any regulatory intervention.
Later in 2024 we will be moving, with the rest of CQC, to using the single assessment framework as the basis for our assessments for all non-rated services. We will share more detail on the timeline for this change soon. The single assessment framework retains the 5 key questions we currently ask but alters the way in which we capture the evidence that underpins these. This will result in a subtle change to the way in which we engage with the sector which we’ll communicate through these monthly bulletins in the new year.
It is important to stress that whilst we will be moving to the single assessment framework along with the rest of CQC, we will NOT be adopting the ratings model that other CQC regulatory sectors traditionally apply. In Oral Health we will be continuing with our model that sees us assess the regulatory compliance of 10% of CQC registered dental locations on an annual basis.
 2 shades of a purple background with a (Righthand side) illustration of a mobile phone, a shield with a tick in the middle overlapping a laptop. (Lefthand side) text reads: DSPT Better security. Better Care. www.digitalcarehub.co.uk/elearning. (Lefthand side) of the image has text that reads: Dr Jane Townson, Chair, Care provider Alliance. “This new eLearning course from better security, better care is the missing piece of the puzzle – and it complies with the training requirement in the Data Security and Protection Toolkit. The Care Provider Alliance encourages all care providers to use the resource to improve and assess their staff’s knowledge”.
Care providers can now improve and assess their staff’s knowledge of data security and protection using a new elearning resource, specifically designed for the care sector.
Better Security, Better Care – the national and local programme supporting adult care providers with data security - has developed the course in response to a gap in the market. It’s free, short, and packed with relevant scenarios to help all staff in adult social care services understand how to keep information safe.
The course also enables care providers to meet the training requirements within the Data Security and Protection Toolkit (DSPT). Collate information about how many staff have successfully completed the course, and use that as evidence against the DSPT requirement to train at least 95% of staff every year.
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