Restoring confidence in your care home in 2021

There is no escaping the fact that – while carers themselves may have been widely lauded for their response to the pandemic – the reputation of care homes as a whole has taken a battering.  Media reports of Covid outbreaks within homes has undermined confidence in the sector’s ability to protect residents, staff, relatives and…

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A week in the life of a care home consultancy

One of the things that we love about helping care-home owners and managers is that no two days are the same. Offering complete care home management support, our consultants could be doing anything from challenging an unfavourable CQC inspection rating to devising a turnkey management solution for a multi-home provider. But our diary across just…

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CQC ratings: is the CQC getting harder to please?

Looking at the CQC ratings given by inspectors over the last three years, this year has seen a move towards focused inspections, increasingly downgrading homes. But what is the real picture behind the headline statistics? And what does this mean for your care home management as you prepare for your next inspection? The coronavirus pandemic…

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Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) preparedness audit

It is inevitable that when CQC resumes inspections, after easing of lockdown rules, they are likely to focus on infection prevention and control and in particular the Department of Health Code of Practice and the Health and Social Care Act 2008. IPC Preparation (Infection Prevention Control) will be essential to ensure your care home maintains or improves your CQC rating.…

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Training, learning, competence, what’s the difference?

So, is it just about delivering the right range of training courses at the right intervals? No CQC Regulation 18 is ‘Make sure that providers deploy enough suitably competent and experienced staff.  What does that mean in practice? Having a staff team at all levels that understand how to use their training in practice when…

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