Adult Social Care Improvement
We’re making big changes to improve adult social care in Gloucestershire and have recently published our Improvement plan.
CQC notification
CQC assessment notification (updated July 2024)
The Health and Care Act 2022 gives the Care Quality Commission (CQC) new powers to provide independent assessment of care at a local authority and integrated care system level. Our self assessment reflects the quality of care in Gloucestershire and CQC inspection will provide independent assurance to the public of the quality of care in their area. On 18 March 2024 we received our CQC Assessment notification and on 8th July CQC confirmed their intentions to start their onsite inspection on 2nd September. They have asked us to share the following two briefing notes for people and partners.
- CQC Briefing note for people and partners - Click here
- CQC Easy Read Briefing note for people and partners - Click here
The CQC Team will be visiting Shire Hall to carry out the onsite assessment and during their visit they will carry out face to face contact or online meetings with
- Council Leaders and staff
- Partner agencies
- People who use the Local Authorities care and support services
- Representative Groups.
Our preparations
Our self-assessment is an important part of preparing us for CQC’s visit as it provides us with an opportunity to show CQC and everyone else how well we understand our strengths and the areas where we need to improve. In September 2023, the Local Government Association (LGA) carried out a peer review which broadly agreed with our self-assessment and gave us advice on areas where we could improve in preparation for our CQC inspection. If you have not yet read our self-assessment then please take time to familiarise yourselves with it, we have recently uploaded an Easy-Read version to these pages click here. Further information about our self-assessment as well as more information about our preparations for the CQC inspection will be uploaded on these pages as we know more.
We will be sending out further information as we progress our planning over the next eight weeks. If you have any questions about anything related to the CQC inspection, please use this email to contact our dedicated CQC project team - GCCCQCInspection@gloucestershire.gov.uk.
CQC assessment - an overview
The Health and Care Act (2022) empowered the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to assess how well local authorities meet their duties under Part 1 of the Care Act (2014) using their single assessment framework.
We asked the Local Government Association (LGA) to undertake a peer review of Gloucestershire in September 2023 - read the full report.
We welcome the additional assurance and transparency that CQC will give people in Gloucestershire and members of the Council and the insights the process will give to inform our continuous improvement.
CQC has published guidance on local authority assessments.
The LGA offers guidance and support to local authorities subject to the CQC’s new assurance framework which has been utilised in helping us to prepare for CQC Assessment. In addition we have also been working with the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) regionally and nationally on sector-led improvement and our self assessment has been benchmarked against our peers.
These webpages provide a comprehensive overview of Adult Social Care services in Gloucestershire, outlining how the local authority meets its responsibilities under the Care Act 2014 and related legislation.
The self-assessment is structured around CQC’s nine quality statements, which address assessing need, supporting people to live healthier lives, equity in experience and outcomes, care provision, partnership, and communities, safeguarding, safe systems, governance and management, and improvement and innovation. The self-assessment asks:
- What are our strengths and our ambition?
- How are we performing and how do we know?
- What are our plans to maintain or improve?
The content is drawn from the last two years until end February 2024.
Any names referenced in case studies have been changed.
Acknowledgements
In drawing this self-assessment report together, we would like to thank our teams for their input and engagement in its development.
We would also like to thank our partners from the following organisations, services, and groups for their contributions to the development of this report:
- Gloucestershire Care Providers Association
- Carers Partnership Board
- Mental Health and Wellbeing Partnership Board
- Learning Disabilities Partnership Board
- Collaborative Partnership Board
- Physical Disabilities and Sensory Impairment Partnership Board
- Autism Partnership Board
- Healthwatch Gloucestershire
- Integrated Care Board
- Age UK
- Gloucestershire Health and Care NHS Foundation Trust
- Integrated Care Board (ICB)