CQC has published its State of Care 2025/26 report, highlighting continued financial pressures, workforce challenges and changes across the adult social care sector. For care home owners and providers, the findings raise practical questions about how services are managed, how leaders are supported and whether governance systems provide a clear picture of care quality. The…
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Maintaining compliance within a care service requires more than preparing for the next CQC inspection. Providers need reliable processes for care planning, medication, staffing, auditing, governance and financial oversight. They also need to understand how these different areas affect the quality and stability of the service as a whole. When information is fragmented across different…
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An empty bed may appear to represent an opportunity for a new admission. Before treating it as available capacity, a provider needs to know whether the home can offer it today. How to Review Vacant Care Home Beds and Admission Capacity The distinction appears in the Department of Health and Social Care’s August 2026 adult…
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Digital care records are now used across much of adult social care. The next challenge for providers is ensuring that the information in them remains useful as people’s needs change. How to Review Digital Care Records and Day-to-Day Practice The Department of Health and Social Care’s August 2026 provider statistics estimate that 83.6% of CQC-registered…
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Occupancy is an important measure of care home performance. On its own, it cannot explain why beds are empty or whether a service is making the most of the capacity it can safely offer. The Department of Health and Social Care’s latest adult social care provider statistics put national care home occupancy at 86.8% for…
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The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) published its Adult social care provider statistics, England: quarterly update to August 2026 on 3 September 2026. What Do the August 2026 Adult Social Care Statistics Show? The release covers care home occupancy, the number of people receiving care, visiting, COVID-19-related staff absence and digital social care…
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Turning Feedback into CQC Evidence: Why Fulcrum Has Partnered with Care Surveys When assessing the quality of a care service, policies, audits, care records and governance processes can tell you a great deal. But they cannot tell you everything. To build a rounded picture of a service, providers also need to understand what care feels…
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Preparing for CQC’s Returning to Good Approach For some adult social care providers, six or seven years may have passed since their service was last assessed and awarded a CQC Good rating. A lot can change during that time. Leadership may be different, staff teams may have changed and the needs of the people using…
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Understanding CQC’s Returning to Good Programme CQC is returning to eligible adult social care services with ageing Good ratings to confirm whether those ratings remain accurate. The CQC Returning to Good programme is focused on services where CQC considers the existing Good rating likely to be maintained, with current priorities generally including ratings that are…
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External management support is often associated with care homes already in serious difficulty. In reality, waiting until a service reaches crisis point can reduce the choices available to owners. The need for additional management capacity frequently becomes apparent much earlier. The challenge is recognising when normal operational pressure has developed into a problem the existing…
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