There’s always a real sense of renewal and fresh starts around this time of year, as the leaves begin to change, and children begin their new school years. This year’s no different as we continue to move towards our new way of working.
We’ve brought together our colleagues into new integrated assessment and inspection teams and invested in and continue to test and deploy new technologies. Our pilot assessments of local authorities and integrated care systems are underway. We’re also beginning to share detailed guidance about our new assessment framework.
The new assessment framework is for providers, local authorities and integrated care systems, and applies from registration. Its focus is on what matters to people who use health and social care services and their families.
There are changes, yes, but there’s also a lot that remains the same. The regulations, ratings and the five key questions (is it safe, is it caring, is it effective, is it responsive, is it well-led?) remain. Under each of the key questions, however, there are new quality statements and we’ll be asking you for evidence to demonstrate how you meet these. The quality statements cover lots of the same areas as the key lines of enquiry (KLOEs).
Change can be unsettling, but I believe that this is a change for the better. The new framework enables a fair playing field for all providers. Some elements will look different, but it’s important to remember that the legal responsibilities remain unchanged.
Please provide us with your best evidence of how you’re meeting the quality standards. The better you know your service and the stronger your information, the better our understanding will be.
While hearing the voices of the people using services and our observations of care remain critical to us, our new regulatory approach allows us to be more flexible about how, and when, we collect evidence. Our new integrated teams, technology and a flexible methodology means we’ll be able to collect evidence more regularly and in more appropriate ways. This means we’ll also be able to carry out more assessments and update our ratings more frequently than we do now. This helps us respond more flexibly to changes in quality.
One of the next big steps is to invite providers to sign up to our new portal. We’re doing this in stages, and we’ll let providers know when it’s their time to join the portal. Please make sure that your contact details are fully up to date so that when we send the invitation to join the platform, the right person receives it.
Sharing improvement
One of the themes in our strategy is to seek out and share improvement where we see it. We recently inspected a residential home for older adults. In their first inspection, St Mary’s Riverside near Hull was ‘Outstanding’ overall, excelling in the areas of caring and well-led. People told us the care they received exceeded their expectations and that staff went above and beyond to ensure people were treated with care, dignity and respect. In addition, an excellent variety of activities and events were available so people could lead meaningful lives.
Spending time being creative can enrich our lives immeasurably. September sees the fifth annual National Day of Arts in Care Homes. The aim of the day is to champion, promote and encourage arts engagement in care settings and highlight the health and wellbeing benefits.
Organised by the National Activity Providers Association (NAPA), this year sees a week-long celebration building to the national awareness day on Sunday 24th September. Exploring our creativity can help us practise long-held skills or learn new ones.
As my colleague James Bullion, Chief Inspector of Adult Social Care and Integrated Care, said, ‘Celebrating arts and creativity in care settings is a powerful way to give voice to people’s experience, and it nourishes our wellbeing. It’s great to shine a spotlight on its value and transformative effect.’
Arts and crafts can keep our hands dexterous and our minds sharp. Just think of the potential to share skills and creative ideas between residents through workshops or activities. How will you be using creativity and arts to demonstrate your commitment to supporting people’s lives?