Quality assurance

In 2022 The Health and Care Act (2022) was introduced. This created new powers for the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

The CQC are responsible for assessing how well local authorities meet their duties under Part 1 of the Care Act (2014).

The CQC use an assessment framework for this and have published guidance on Local Authorities assessments.

Each Local Authority will be assessed against four themes

• Theme 1 - How we work with people
• Theme 2 - How we provide support 
• Theme 3 - How we keep people safe
• Theme 4 - How we led

Five key questions

The assessment framework is made up of five key questions and, under each key question, a set of quality statements.

The five key questions are the things CQC ask of all health and social care services. 

They ask if our services are:

• safe
• effective
• caring
• responsive to people's needs
• well-led

Quality statements

Quality statements are the commitments that providers, commissioners and system leaders should live up to. Expressed as ‘we statements’, they show what is needed to deliver high-quality, person-centred care.

To meet CQC assessment guidelines, we have created two posts to ensure we are providing the type of care we can be proud of. The team prepare all the evidence we need for the Care Quality Commission with our service leads and the directorate leadership team.

Before the change in legislation, we had a positive approach to Quality Assurance and created an Assurance Framework. The framework was created to monitor and improve the quality of care provided to people we support. 

It ensures that our services meet standards of quality, safety and effectiveness. 

The Quality Assurance team will

• complete team audits and case file audits to check how well we are doing and where we would like to improve
• hold a staff network for open conversations with staff about the quality of our services
• ask experts by experience, what they think of our services
• collate all our evidence into learning briefings with clear action plans to improve
• create a culture where quality assurance is everybody’s business

• we want to ensure people are safe
• we want to improve the wellbeing and quality of life of people we work with
• we want to maintain good standards, celebrate good work and, where required, make improvements
• we want to demonstrate accountability – assuring transparency and responsibility
• we want to develop staff confidence, ensuring we all have necessary skills to do our job well

North Somerset commenced the assurance process on 24 June 2024.

The process involves

• CQC looking at openly available data and information
• providing lots of reports and data in an "Information Return" submission (this includes our self-assessment)
• feedback from partner organisations
• an onsite visit from CQC where they will talk to experts and staff

The process will take several months. At the end we will receive a rating. The current rating system has four categories 

• outstanding
• good
• requires improvement
• inadequate

As a part of our preparation for the assurance visit from CQC, we have been gathering the evidence required for our information submission as well as preparing our self-assessment.

Our self-assessment was coproduced by the senior leadership team. This document 

• reflects our values
• outlines the areas of good practice
• indicates areas where some development work is required 
• highlights our plans and ambitions

We are also engaging with our partners, providers, voluntary sector, and people who draw on care and support, to gather their feedback. 

If you have any questions or queries around our quality assurance team or processes, please contact us via email.