The Care Quality Commission, the independent regulator of health and adult social care in England, has released two reports. The first, a COVID-19 Insight report, looks at regional data on designated settings – these are care homes and other places where people with a COVID-positive test result can be discharged safely from hospital.
The second report is the final part of the independent review by Professor Glynis Murphy into the CQC’s regulation of Whorlton Hall.
The Whorlton Hall report makes a further five recommendations relating to:
- Services should not be rated as ‘Good’ or ‘Outstanding’ if they have used frequent restraint, seclusion and segregation.
- Services should not be rated as ‘Good’ or ‘Outstanding’ if they cannot show how they support whistleblowing and reporting of concerns.
- Trialling of the Group Home Culture Scale tool, to evaluate whether it helps inspectors determine which settings have closed cultures.
- Trialling of the Quality of Life tool to gauge whether it helps the CQC move from evaluating process, towards evaluating more relevant service user outcomes.
- Development of guidelines for when evidence of the quality of care should be gathered from overt or covert surveillance.
Peter Wyman, Chair of the CQC, said: “Professor Murphy’s second report explores the international research in relation to the detection and prevention of abuse in services and makes additional recommendations for the CQC. The report has today been welcomed by the CQC’s board who will be considering how best to take forward the recommendations.”
Read the Whorlton Hall report here.