Background
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and adult social care in England. It makes sure health and social care services provide people with safe, effective, compassionate, high-quality care and it encourages care services to improve.
It monitors, inspects and regulates services and publishes its findings. Where it finds poor care, it uses its powers to take action.
In 2023, a new approach to regulation was introduced, based around a single assessment framework. This framework applies to providers, local authorities and other organisations providing health and social care services.
The CQC reports, published following inspections, state what it has assessed as the quality of care given by individual providers.
The CQC uses these ratings to summarise their assessment of the provider:
- outstanding – the service is performing exceptionally well;
- good – the service is performing well and meeting the CQC’s expectations;
- requires improvement – the service is not performing as well as it should and the CQC has told the service how it must improve;
- inadequate – the service is performing badly and the CQC has taken action against the person or organisation that runs it.
For more information, see Adult Social Care: Information for Providers, which includes care homes, home care companies, specialist colleges, extra care housing, Shared Lives schemes and supported living services.
