Care homes and care at home to be inspected every year
Posted on Friday 16 September 2011
All care homes and care at home services will be inspected at least once a year as a statutory requirement, according to an announcement made yesterday (15/9/11) by Cabinet Secretary for Health Nicola Sturgeon. All care home inspections will be unannounced.
CCPS has checked with the Scottish Government and confirmed that housing support services will NOT be included in this arrangement. The new minimum frequency of inspection will apply to all care groups.
Whilst this measure clearly reflects concerns expressed by politicians and indeed by users and carers, particularly in the wake of the Elsie Inglis nursing home closure, CCPS feels bound to observe that it flies in the face of decisions made as a result of the Crerar review process, and indeed the many discussions and debates surrounding the subsequent legislation, which placed great emphasis both on a risk-based approach to regulation and an intelligence-led system of scrutiny, as opposed to statutory minimum frequency levels of inspection. CCPS recalls in particular that on several occasions during these discussions, the point was made that in order for such an approach to be successful, politicians would have to hold their nerve in the face of a serious incident or collapse: note that we are less than six months into the operation of the new system.
You can follow this link to the the Scottish Government news release detailing the announcement.
The Cabinet Secretary also announced that the regulator – formerly known as SCSWIS – will now be called the Care Inspectorate.
This is in response to many submissions questioning the name of the scrutiny body.
In further news, the Scottish Government has said that it will explore ways in which greater scrutiny can be applied to the business models employed by private sector care providers. This is in the wake of the Southern Cross collapse, where private equity was a factor.