The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has announced today that it will carry out an inspection programme of providers of home care services.

The programme will start in April 2012 and will cover about 250 providers of domiciliary care services. It will run alongside CQC's planned reviews of these services and focus on three outcomes:

  • Respecting and involving people who use services;
  • Care and welfare of people who use services; and
  • Supporting workers

CQC inspectors will be joined by professional experts and 'experts by experience' – people who have a personal experience of using home care services. CQC Chief Executive Cynthia Bower said:  "We will use a range of ways of checking up on these services, including going into people's homes, contacting people who use services and their families, talking to local groups who represent the users of home care services, and we will also ask people to fill in questionnaires."

The programme will be supported by an advisory group, with members drawn from a range of organisations including the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Age UK, the United Kingdom Homecare Association and the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services.

As well as producing an inspection report for each individual provider, the CQC will also produce a national report that sets out findings about quality and safety in these themed inspections.

These inspections follow a pilot programme of 30 inspections of domiciliary care services, where CQC has been trialling different methods to make sure inspectors clearly hear the views of people who use the services and their families.

The announcement comes a day before the Equality and Human Rights Commission publishes a report on home cares services which highlights a number of its concerns. A spokesperson from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said: "We believe this move by the CQC could be an important first step in addressing some of the concerns raised by our inquiry into home care, being published tomorrow. It reveals disturbing evidence that the poor treatment of many older people is threatening their human rights and concerns about how threats to these rights are detected. We look forward to being part of CQC's advisory panel."

CQC Chief Executive Cynthia Bower said: "Home care is one of the most difficult areas of care to monitor. Often the people who use home care services find themselves in vulnerable circumstances and the operation of home care is not as transparent as care in hospitals and other sectors because the interactions happen behind closed doors in people's homes. That is why we want to focus on this sector of social care in this way.

"We know decisions made about commissioning are critical to those who provide and receive home care. External issues such as pressures on council budgets and the desire of people to remain in their own homes as long as they can, create challenges for those providing services, and may increase risks of unsafe care. This underlines the need for us to thoroughly analyse service delivery in this area.

"Alongside these issues, we share the Equality and Human Rights Commission's concerns due to be highlighted in its report published tomorrow. In this programme of reviews we will focus in part on dignity and respect, the safeguarding of people in vulnerable circumstances, and how well supported and trained home care staff are to undertake these most important care tasks.  We have chosen these outcome areas as they are "gateway" issues that lead us into examining a range of rights based issues."

Comment

This announcement is another example of the Government's tighter regulation of the personal care sector. The Equality and Human Rights Commission report due to be published tomorrow (23 November) is expected to raise concerns about home care services and some providers may find this report useful as they may have to use the time until next April to ensure that they fully comply with relevant CQC standards.

Additionally, it will be interesting to see whether CQC inspections also focus on compliance with the new registration regime introduced under the Health and Social Care Act 2008. This Act makes care providers responsible for obtaining registration for the correct regulated activity e.g. providing personal care (or supported living) or providing accommodation with personal care (or running a care home). Failure to correctly register under the Act may lead to criminal liability (a fine of up to £50,000 and/or imprisonment of up to 12 months) and severe disruption to the provider (e.g. suspension of existing registration). The CQC has issued guidance on registration requirements on its website.

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This article was written for Law-Now, CMS Cameron McKenna's free online information service. To register for Law-Now, please go to www.law-now.com/law-now/mondaq

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The original publication date for this article was 22/11/2011.