Commission adjusts focus to outcomes

The Commission for Social Care Inspection has produced consultative proposals on how inspectors should assess providers against new quality ratings.

The proposals are part of the commission’s drive to make inspection more focused on outcomes.

From this year, the commission will rate services as excellent, good, adequate or poor on a range of outcome measures, and the draft Key Lines of Regulatory Assessment will help inspectors decide the ratings.

Outcomes measures cover areas such as quality of staffing and the extent to which care meets people’s needs.

They are based on groups of national minimum standards.

The commission’s head of methodology, Anni Hartley-Walder, said: “The standards will be seen as evidence for these outcomes rather than taken in their own right.”

• Key Lines of Regulatory Assessment from www.csci.org.uk