Health and Social Care

Launch of Consultation on the National Care Standards

October 22, 2015 by Linda White No Comments | Category Uncategorized

This week saw the launch of a consultation on the draft over-arching principles of the new National Care Standards.

Many people will be aware that the Care Inspectorate and Healthcare Improvement Scotland are leading the development of Scotland’s new National Care Standards. These will be developed with people who use services, providers and other interested parties, and the overarching Principles will apply across all health and social care services. Later, there will more detailed standards, both general and specific, which will apply to specific sectors and services.

We all want high-quality services which provide high-quality, compassionate care for everyone. Until 10 December 2015, we will consult on these draft overarching Principles, which will apply to all care services, hospitals, independent healthcare, NHS surgeries, social work provision, early learning and childcare, and many more.

The draft Principles are that everyone has the right to:

• be respected
•  compassion
• be included
•  be treated fairly
• a responsive service
•  be safe
• personal wellbeing

After the consultation has finished on 10 December 2015 and people’s views considered, the final Principles will be rolled out from April 2016.

We will then draft the new more detailed standards and consult on them. We anticipate that the new detailed National Care Standards will be rolled out from 2017 and will form the basis for scrutiny after that.

Your views matter. Help us to develop the Principles and the new National Care Standards and shape the future of health and social care in Scotland. Take part in our consultation at www.newcarestandards.scot where you can also view a short film about the consultation and keep up-to-date with ongoing developments.

We’re changing how we inspect

Also, and as part of a separate development, the Care Inspectorate will be changing how we inspect and support care providers to improve. In future, our inspections will be based on outcomes for people using services, underpinned by human rights. The changes take account of wider social health and care issues, including the development of the new National Care Standards.

This year, we are testing out some new inspection types:

1. Follow-up inspections – where a care home or other service is performing poorly and needs a second inspection in a year, which will focus on the requirements made at the first inspection. These won’t automatically award new grades.
2. Thematic inspections – where we will examine a key issue across a representative number of services and focus our reporting on performance relating to that key issue. We are testing 36 of these in high-performing care homes for adults, looking in detail at the Keys to Life. These won’t award new grades.
3. Validation inspections – where we will pilot about 100 validation inspections in 2015/16 in highly performing services were there are no concerns to assure the public that previous high standards are being maintained and report on what makes them so good. Some nurse agencies and housing support services will be included in this pilot.
4. Early years focused inspections – where we will look at the providers’ quality assurance systems in around 36 day care of children services and how they monitor and ensure good outcomes for children. These will award grades by themes, but not for individual quality statements.

At the end of our review, we want to have these specific changes in place.

• A new inspection framework, linked more closely to the National Care Standards
• Examples of ‘very good’ and ‘weak’ practice by service type
• An evaluation framework, shared with providers, showing how we award grades
• An inspection and improvement toolbox which we inspect against and providers can use for their own quality assurance.
• More robust, dynamic self-assessment
• Clearer intelligence to better target our scrutiny and be more proportionate in highly-performing services
• More support for improvement
• Shorter, clearer inspection reports

Rami Okasha

Director of Strategic Development, Care Inspectorate

Find out more in our ‘Excellence in Care’ leaflet. Call us on 0345 600 9527 or visit www.careinspectorate.com

Tags: Care Inspectorate, Consultation, Healthcare Improvement Scotland, National Care Standards, Scottish Government

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