Inspection Readiness - External Consultant Commissioning

Tender description

On 11 February 2021, the Department of Health and Social Care published the White Paper Integration and innovation: working together to improve health and social care for all, which sets out legislative proposals for a health and care Bill. In recognition of the increasing numbers of people who need adult social care and the consequent need for greater oversight of the provision and commissioning of services, the White Paper proposes introducing a new duty for the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to assess how local authorities are meeting their adult social care duties, and a new power for the Secretary of State to intervene where CQC considers a local authority to be failing to meet these duties. The Bill still has to pass through parliament and there isn’t a timeline yet for this, so we don’t know when an ASC CQC Inspection Framework will be published, or when inspections will begin. We can assume that this will take at least a year. The inspection gives us the opportunity to ensure that we are compliant with legislation and that we are delivering and commissioning high-quality services that meet the needs of the people we support. The announcement allows us to bring together our inspection preparation with the development of the Adult Health and Social Care Transformation Programme. It presents an opportunity to have more rigour in our governance arrangements and our practice. It will help us to focus on quality throughout everything we do, embedding a continuous performance improvement culture, while making us more accountable to the people we support. We have a well-developed inspection readiness plan and have begun to engage extensively with our workforce.