When they are carrying out their care home inspections, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) asks five key questions. We believe that two of the most important are whether that home is caring and is it effective?

Typically, care homes fall down on the questions around leadership and safety but whether they are both effective and caring is crucial – and at the heart of what British care facilities should be providing to their residents.

So what makes an effective care home and how can you give your home the best opportunity of achieving not just a good CQC rating, but an outstanding one?

According to the CQC: “By effective, we mean that people’s care, treatment and support achieved good outcomes, promotes a good quality of life and is based on the best available evidence”.

At Caresolve, we work with care home owners and operators to make sure they have everything in place to ensure a consistency of care. We look at everything, from how committed the staff are to what policies and procedures are in place to ensure a consistency of care.

Since last April, all health and social care workers have to be inducted according to the Care Certificate framework which replaced the Common Induction Standards and National Minimum Training Standards.

The Care Certificate represents the first time that the same standards have been applied across health and social care. The intention is that the new standards will ensure that all health and social care workers have the required values, behaviours, competences and skills to provide high quality, compassionate care.

There is now a clear requirement to show that staff have been assessed in the workplace to demonstrate their competence and safety to practice.

Despite this, we still come across cases where operators have created their own induction process and think this is an adequate way of introducing new employees into their facility.

Alongside the induction process, care homes must show that employees receive regular supervision from an appropriate member of staff, along with annual appraisals and training.

We know that the really outstanding homes are the ones which challenge the norm. They seek to exceed expectations whether this is in the people they recruit, the training they give them, the importance they place on people’s care plans or the culture they create within their care home setting.

We see this as the gold standard and think it should be the aspiration of every care home operator across the land. It is also what our loved ones have every right to expect every minute of every day.

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