Quality of life is key measurement

If
homeowners fail to meet the new national standards, this will not
necessarily count against them provided they can show that desired
outcomes for users are being met, according to Anne Parker,
chairperson of the National Care Standards Commission.

Speaking
in York at the 10th National Association of Inspection and
Registration Officers annual meeting, Parker dispelled any idea
that the new inspection regime would concentrate on collecting data
on areas such as room sizes at the expense of measuring the quality
of life experienced by users.

However
she conceded that the £120m-a-year NCSC would have to collect
a mass of basic information to build up a national picture before
it developed sophisticated ways of measuring the quality of
life.

“We’ve
got 10,000 registrations to carry out in our first year,” she said,
“and it may be a nasty shock for some of them.” But, she argued,
“if the information can be harnessed in a way to really inform
policy development, we will have a huge contribution to make.”