Will home care get a fair deal from the CQC?
Will home care get a fair deal from the CQC?
By Paul Roberts
www.caringforyourbusiness.co.uk
Will the newly-launched Care Quality Commission have the resources and inspectors to effectively regulate health and adult social care?
That’s the big question being asked in home care circles this week – and there are strong fears that home care will be the ‘poor relation’.
There have been strong hints in the past few weeks that the CQC – successors to the Commission for Social Care Inspection – will focus primarily on health care in the next year.
Unions have warned that the CQC is inheriting a situation where staffing cuts, office closures and defective IT systems have left staff ‘stretched to breaking point’.
Helga Pile, UNISON’s national officer for social services, says staff unions fear the CQC will struggle to drive up standards with a budget 40% lower than their predecessors.
The CQC has set out a number of key tasks it aims to carry out this year. According to a report on Community Care.co.uk, these will include:
· Developing a new registration system for health and social care, to be introduced from April next year
· Producing a ‘scored assessment’ of councils’ adult social care performance
· Continuing CSCI’s regulation of adult care providers (with a quality rating of those services it inspects)
The CQC also says it will carry out a special review of the entire system of care for people who have a stroke and their carers.
They all present formidable challenges – but are just a small proportion of the tasks facing the CQC over the next 12 months.
Britain’s national media have strongly indicated that reducing infections in hospitals will be the main priority for the organisation.
Former employees of the CSCI – many of whom have not transferred to CQC – warn that social care, particularly home care, will take a ‘back seat’.
There are widespread fears that inspections and handling of complaints will be a ‘casualty’ of the demise of the CSCI.
Some former employees – on internet blogs and anonymously in local newspapers – say the regulation of social care could descend into chaos.
CQC Chair Barbara Young has vigorously defended the new organisation, saying its launch marks a new stage in the drive for quality and safety in health and adult social care.
‘CQC will join up the regulation of health and adult social care across the public and independent sectors for the first time. The public wants good quality of care wherever it is provided and wants care that is joined up’, she says.
‘We will put people’s rights to good quality and safe care right at the heart of what we do. We will work hard to ensure that users of services and their carers and families are fully involved in shaping our work and the driving up of quality.’
Cynthia Bower, Chief Executive of the CQC, says staff will be ‘our strength and I am confident that we have a great team in place to make us a first class regulator.’
It’s too early to judge the performance of the CQC – it’s only been in existence since April 1 2009. But it has been launched under a cloud.
The home care industry deserves a better service and support than that offered by the CSCI. CQC and its leaders have to demonstrate they have what it takes to deliver improvements.
Sadly, home care has hardly merited a mention during the launch of CQC. That does not bode well for the future.
Paul Roberts
www.caringforyourbusiness.co.uk
Roberts Consultants, specialists in developing home care businesses
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