Towards the end of 2024, we commissioned the Care Provider Alliance (CPA) to review our single assessment framework from the perspective of adult social care providers. This work was done alongside the review into the framework carried out by Professor Sir Mike Richards. We are grateful to members of the CPA who supported this work, offering up a wide range of voices with a robust reflection of their views and experiences.
The report, which we published on our website in February 2025, made 11 recommendations for us to consider. It also articulated a powerful message from providers about the need to improve their experience of inspection with us. It is clear from the stories shared with us that, on some occasions, providers have felt a distressing impact on their organisations and even their own mental wellbeing from our approach to regulation and inspection.
We are already undertaking urgent action on our priority improvement workplan to make the changes required to get us back to good regulation. We know that this is an ambition we share with providers of adult social care and we are determined to improve providers’ experience of regulation.
The CQC Way
One of the key pieces of work we are undertaking, alongside providers, people who use services, other stakeholders and CQC colleagues, is developing what we are calling the CQC Way. The challenges we have faced as an organisation over the last few years have led to an increasing lack of clarity around our vision and purpose. This has been hampering our efforts to be the effective regulator we know is needed at the heart of a health and social care system that delivers the outcomes people need.
During February, we brought together thousands of colleagues, providers and stakeholders at in-person events to start the work on agreeing our CQC Way. This work is being co-designed because good regulation should matter to everyone. Providers at the events echoed the concerns raised in the CPA report that regular and timely assessments are essential and that they need a constructive and trusted relationship with CQC. There was discussion of how we need to make our assessment approach simpler and clearer, too.
It is clear to me and my colleagues, through these events and other regular engagement activities with providers and people who use services, that we are all working towards the same shared goal – ensuring that health and social care services provide safe, effective, compassionate and high-quality care, and that our regulatory activity also encourages care services to improve.
Outstanding local authority
We have recently rated the London Borough of Camden as ‘Outstanding’ in how it is meeting its responsibilities to ensure people have access to adult social care and support. Camden’s rating is the first Outstanding local authority assessment report since we were given new responsibilities to assess how local authorities meet their duties under the Care Act (2014) in 2022.
Assessing Camden was a moving and exhilarating experience for our local authority assessment team. We saw Camden turn its strategic intent into ways of working that are making a real difference. It was all about the people – from the citizens of Camden and the people working in the authority to all the partners they connected with. There was a compassionate energy about the place that was truly inspiring. That sense of working together with a shared sense of purpose was evident. I am feeling a similar energy in our CQC Way work as we move forward together.
To read the CQC’s response to the CPA’s review of the single assessment framework, click here. Then, leave a comment on this column or join the conversation to share your thoughts.
Mary Cridge is Director of Adult Social Care at the Care Quality Commission (CQC). Email: [email protected] X @CQCProf