If you’re a care company, then you’ll likely know that The Care Quality Commission is set to roll out its new single assessment framework from November 2023. Having reviewed the changes we’re pleased to have a number of resources that can support you with getting prepared.
The new framework includes several significant changes around how services will be assessed, including the introduction of broader ‘Quality Statements’ that sit within the KLOE’s, replacing the detailed prompts.
We are big fans of the new Quality Statements and we could instantly see how we could support you to create great evidence for them using some of our free resources.
For our Judgement Index customers we’ve got even more, as they’ll be able to use their Judgement Index reports as evidence to backup how they’re meeting the new Quality Statement requirements.
In this blog I’ll pick out a few of the Quality Statements and demonstrate how you would evidence them:
CARING
Quality Statement: Workforce well-being and enablement.
“We care about and promote the wellbeing of our staff, and we support and enable them to always deliver person centred care.”
We predicted that wellbeing of staff would become a focus point for CQC at some point in the future – in fact, we’ve been preparing our clients for it over the last year!
If you’re looking at what you can do to support staff wellbeing that creates a positive impact and can be easily evidenced, then check out the video below that I created for Care Management Matters earlier this year. Grab a pen because in 15 minutes I take you through a number of ideas including:
- Different aspects of wellbeing. How to work out where your team are struggling and know where to focus. This exercise produces evidence that you can put straight into your evidence folder.
- How to review what you’re already doing and capture easy wellbeing-wins for evidence.
- Step by step on creating a wellbeing strategy that lasts for the whole year – with some help from your team!
All of the ideas in the video do not require too much time or effort but could make a big difference to your overall rating. There’s more in the accompanying article I wrote for CMM, including why you should start with a staff wellbeing survey and the exact questions you should ask your team. No more rubbish survey questions!
*For Judgement Index customers – Get in touch with us to produce a wellbeing report from your staff Judgement Index data, all we need is a staff list. This anonymised report can be added directly to your evidence folder along with a plan to address the key wellbeing areas highlighted. We can create this plan with you and it’s included for free within your subscription.
WELL-LED
Quality Statement: Shared direction and culture.
“We have a shared vision, strategy and culture. This is based on transparency, equity, equality and human rights, diversity and inclusion, engagement, and understanding challenges and the needs of people and our communities in order to meet these.”
It would be easy to just point to your company values or mission statement, whether they be on a wall somewhere or in a staff handbook, but that’s probably not going to have the ‘wow’ factor for any CQC inspector.
Whether you’re part of a big, national care group, a single home or a homecare provider, you can develop a strong shared vision for your team, along with a strategy and culture to back it up.
We have a blog on how to run a workshop for your team that kicks off all of this – and the best bit is you can take photos of the workshop for evidence, and create visuals and posters for around the home that the CQC inspector will not be able to avoid when they visit!
Take inspiration from the poster below created by the team at Castleford House – The values and descriptions were written and agreed by all the team, so it truly demonstrates a shared vision.
*Want some extra support with this? Get in touch and enquire about our Half Day Values and Culture Workshop. We can facilitate a workshop for your team that maps against this Quality Statement and makes an inspiring and productive session for the people involved. Available for both customers and non-customers.
WELL-LED
Quality Statement: Freedom to speak up.
“We foster a positive culture where people feel that they can speak up and that their voice will be heard.”
*This one is just for Judgement Index customers – If you take a look at your Care Sector Team Report, I bet you’ll see Assertiveness or Dealing With Difficult People as a common area for development in your team. Make sure this report is in your evidence folder, along with a ‘What Next/What We Did’ document.
Your next steps are:
- Make sure your staff handbook and induction process include clear guidelines on any open-door policy with management, who to talk to if the staff member has something they wish to share (lines of communication), a process for dealing with anonymous feedback and information on how you feedback to the team on anything that’s raised. This could be through a newsletter, regular meeting or via a noticeboard.
- Use an anonymised survey to understand anything the team feel they struggle to speak up about. Create a ‘Speak Up’ event/day/week where you can focus on the common topics raised through the survey.
- Share content that helps the team understand how to feel more confident in speaking up. This could be YouTube videos on assertiveness, tips on handling a difficult family member, a podcast on building confidence.
- Evidence it all alongside the Judgement Index report to show that you’re taking steps to address the development areas highlighted.
Additional resources:
We recommend downloading Care Research’s ‘Mapping Document’ – it’s available for free! It will help you to re-organise your current evidence processes and help you to see where various aspects of your current care provision practices will ‘sit’ within the new framework.
Mark Topps has also created a guide that breaks down the changes. Here’s a link to his LinkedIn post about it with the document available to download.
I also spoke with Karen Ritson from Outstanding Care Consultancy – she said “It’s important for providers to be proactive and think about how they will demonstrate what they do. Inspection should not be a passive process as CQC will very probably be spending less time on site and relying on information sent to them.”
Some useful advice there from Karen and shows that it’s more important than ever to present the inspectors with your great evidence, or it might just get missed.
How else can we help?
We know that preparing for changes can feel overwhelming. If you’d like to take a closer look at how the Judgement Index supports companies to meet the standards of the Quality Statements and how we help our clients to create great evidence then please get in touch.
