CQC concerned about safety, safeguarding and training

The Care Quality Commission has commended recent improvements in care services but says that reform is still essential and that there are areas of concern across the health and social care sector, particularly in regards to safeguarding people and staff training.

These comments came as the regulator published its first annual report to parliament on the state of health care and adult social care in England. The report asserts that joining up health and social care will result in both sectors delivering better care and greater efficiency. The CQC aims to make services more centred on people’s needs.

The care service regulator has noted many positive improvements in 2009, such as 63% of NHS trusts, 77% of adult social care providers and 95% of councils being rated ‘good’ or ‘excellent’. Waiting times in hospital A&E;departments have been significantly reduced and the rate of incident reporting has improved. However, the CQC has also highlighted three key areas in which many services are failing to meet standards. These are safety, safeguarding, and workforce training.

The CQC’s concern about safety stems from the fact that, despite national progress, the reporting rate of incidents varies significantly across organisations. It is vital that organisations report all incidents so that they can learn and improve and from 1st April this reporting will become mandatory.
The report suggests that protecting people from harm is also an issue, with 9% of NHS trusts failing to meet the minimum standard on child safeguarding. Although the vast majority of social care providers did satisfy minimum requirements for safeguarding, there were still serious failings in over 380 services.

Perhaps the biggest area of concern to emerge from the report is that of workforce training. The standard that requires care staff to participate in mandatory training programmes has the lowest overall compliance rate of all standards. The CQC report that compliance rates vary from 73% to 90% among NHS staff and that less than 86% of adult social care providers meet the training standard. Although these rates appear high, as a mandatory programme, compliance with the standard for training should be 100%. Minimum requirements include basic training on safeguarding, life support and fire safety.

CQC's interim chair, Dame Jo Williams, said: "Overall, there have been steady improvements and it is really important to celebrate that. Successes have come in areas that really matter to people such as reducing hospital infection rates and helping people live independently at home. But we are mindful of the fact that pockets of poor practice remain. This must be addressed.”

Perry Leeks, Operations Director at First Response, says: “As one of the UK’s leading health and safety training providers we offer a diverse range of training courses aimed at the care sector which have been carefully developed and mapped to meet CQC requirements. Many of our courses also meet Common Induction Standards and NVQ Level 2. We can offer adult abuse awareness and child protection courses, basic life support and statutory fire training, amongst others, to help ensure your setting is meeting the standard.”

Call us today for further information on our care sector training.