Adult social care quality assurance

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) makes sure health and social care services support people with safe, effective, compassionate, high-quality care and encourage improvements.

Find out more about how it does this.

The CQC's inspection and assessment is crucial for ensuring the highest quality of care for residents in Islington.

Our assessment by the CQC

The CQC is now assessing adult social care services in local authorities across the country to make sure they meet the required standards and residents’ needs by providing good quality care and support.

As part of a new quality assurance process, the CQC is looking at how local authorities are meeting their duties under Part 1 of the Care Act (2014).

How the CQC inspects local authorities

The CQC inspects all local authorities by using themes from a new single assessment framework. These are:

• working with people
• providing support
• how the local authority ensures safety within the system
• leadership.

Evidence that the CQC uses in its inspection

The CQC gathers evidence in this order.

1. Available information - such as evidence from national data collections and our registered providers.
2. Requested information - for example, specific policies and strategies, internal and external survey results, feedback from staff, and self-assessment of performance.
3. Actively collected information - from case tracking, focus groups, and conversations with staff and leaders. The CQC will only actively collect information that it can’t get any other way.

How the CQC gathers evidence

• The CQC uses the most suitable options to gather evidence for a theme by on-site and off-site methods. 
• The information return requests documentary evidence and key information that the CQC needs to carry out an assessment.

Find out more about how the CQC gathers evidence.

How the CQC decides a rating

The CQC follows its first three stages to decide on its rating of a local authority:

1. Review evidence within the evidence categories they’re assessing for each quality statement.
2. Apply a score to each of these evidence categories.
3. Combine these evidence category scores to give a score for the related quality statement.

It then totals the quality statement scores to give an overall score and a rating for the local authority.

A poor quality statement score means that a local authority can't be given an overall good or outstanding rating. A score of 2 means the CQC can't give a rating of outstanding, and a score of 1 means it can't give a rating of good or outstanding.

Read more about how the CQC reaches a rating.

After the assessment

Once the assessment is finished, the CQC:

• publishes a report outlining strengths and areas for improvement - more about how the CQC publishes its findings
• requires a local authority to address any issues and make improvements if needed.

For any questions, comments or other feedback, email: CQCAssessment@islington.gov.uk