Skills for Care launches new guide to help services improve

Skills for Care has launched a new online guide to help social care employers to identify, plan and implement improvements across their service

The ‘Guide to improvement’ offers a comprehensive toolkit to help organisations deliver high quality care and support, and meet regulatory standards. 

The guide was created because, at the beginning of this year, 17% of regulated adult social care services in England were still delivering care that didn’t meet the CQC’s fundamental standards.

Organisations need to act quickly to make sure that they meet these standards, as, when quality begins to drop, they’re much more likely to need costly interventions to turn that service around.  

Even when a service is already achieving the CQC’s fundamental standards continuous improvement is a key part of achieving and maintaining a ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ rating.

Skills for Care’s project manager, Rob Hargreaves, knows from working with employers that continuous improvement is vital for any service so they can meet the needs of the people they support.

“Whether you’re responding to a negative inspection, or striving for ‘outstanding’, making improvement brings lots of benefits, no matter what your CQC rating,” says Rob Hargreaves.

“As a manager, it’s your responsibility to decide what you want to improve and how you’ll do that. A CQC inspection provides an independent assessment of your service, and gives you the essential and potential areas for improvement to ensure that you meet, and exceed, their fundamental standards - but your CQC inspection shouldn’t be the only thing that drives improvement in your service.

“’Good’ and ‘outstanding’ rated providers invest in a robust quality assurance process that considers feedback from people who need care and support, families, staff and other stakeholders, and use this to make informed decisions about their service. 

“They have strong leaders and managers, committed staff and a positive workplace culture that support improvement, and make the right investments to ensure it happens.”

The online guide will help adult social care employers to identify what their service needs to improve and develop an action plan to implement the required changes. 

You can download the guide free from Skills for Care’s website at www.skillsforcare.org.uk/guidetoimprovement