29/05/06 - CSCI reduces burden on registered providers monthly reporting

CSCI have reduced a reporting burden on care home providers, who are not in day to day charge of their care home.

CSCI -
We no longer need you to send us your monthly visit reports as a matter of routine.

We will only ask for your reports if we have concerns about the quality of service you are providing and need to monitor improvements.

We have also simplified the format that we suggest you use for your reports.

Policy and Guidance:

Registered Provider Visits to their Care Home

(Required by Regulation 26 of the Care Homes Regulations 2001)

Outcome

1. Registered care home providers are responsible for monitoring the quality of service provided in their care homes.

2. Care home providers take account of the views of people living in their care homes.

3. We are able to monitor care homes' improvement plans in a way that is proportionate to the quality of care provided. We do not routinely monitor good quality services and spend more time on services that need more attention.

Main Points

4. If a care home provider is not in day-to-day charge of their care home, the law says they must make a monthly, unannounced visit to it. At the visit, they need to check on the quality of service provided at the home. The provider needs to keep a copy of the report so that it can be inspected at the next key inspection.

5. We may ask for a copy of the report to be sent to us so that we can monitor the provider's improvement plans.

Who must visit the care home?

5. If the registered provider is an individual, who is not in day-to-day charge of the care home, that individual must visit the care home.

6. If the registered provider is an organisation or partnership, the care home must be visited by:

" the responsible individual (but see also paragraph 7 below) or

" one of the partners or

" a director or other person who is responsible for the management of the organisation or partnership or

" an employee of the organisation or partnership who is not directly involved in the day to day running of the care home.

7. In some cases, an organisation's or partnership's responsible individual and their registered manager may be the same individual. This could lead to a conflict of interest as that individual could be responsible, as manager, for delivering the care and, as responsible individual, for reporting on its quality. The organisation or partnership will need to show us how they will manage the possible conflict of interest between the individual's two roles. They may do this by getting someone else from the list in paragraph 6 above, who is not directly involved in the day to day running of the care home, to carry out the monthly visits and report on what they find. Alternatively, the responsible individual may complete the reports if they include and reflect information from an independent quality monitoring system.

When must they visit the care home?

8. The responsible individual must visit the care home at least once a month. Their visits should be unannounced.

What must they do at the visit?

9. The visit provides a good opportunity for the provider to monitor the quality of the service being provided in their care home. They may wish to concentrate on aspects of the service that people using it have told them they need to improve. They should include all the things identified for action in their improvement plan. They should look at how they are promoting equality and meeting the diverse needs of their residents.

10. They must interview, with consent and in private a representative sample of:

a. residents of the care home and their representatives

. people working at the care home

They should select a representative sample that will give them a good overview of the experiences of people living and working in the care home with particular regard to their equality and diversity

1. They must inspect the premises of the care home.

2. They must inspect the care home's record of events and records of any complaints.

How must they record their visit?

13. They must write a report about their visit. It should say what they did and what they have found out about the service being provided. They should say what progress is being made on the improvement plan. The report should include the experiences of people living and working in the home.

14. The report is primarily a tool that the provider can use as part of their management of the quality of their service. Providers may therefore wish to develop their own format for the report that fits in with other aspects of their quality monitoring.

15. The form at Annex 1 provides a suggested format for the report that providers may, but do not have to use.

What must they do with the report?

16. The report helps the provider to monitor and improve the quality of their service in ways that matter to the people using it. The provider does not need to send us the reports every month as a matter of routine.

17. They must keep the report at least until their next key inspection so that we can inspect it if we decide we need to.

18. If we are concerned about the quality of service being provided at the care home, for example if they have a level 1, poor quality rating, we may ask the provider to send us a copies of their reports. How often we ask for the reports depends on the quality of service being delivered and the rate of improvement. We will use these reports to monitor action against the provider's improvement plan. The reports we receive will form part of the record of evidence for the care home.

19. If we ask the provider to send us the report, they can do so by any means e.g. by hand, post, fax or e-mail. The provider may wish to consider sending the report by secure means if it contains any confidential, particularly private, personal information.

20. The provider must also make the report available to:

" The service's registered manager and

" If the registered provider is an organisation, to each of the directors or other people responsible for the management of the organisation; or

" If the registered provider is a partnership, to each of the partners.

Annex 1

Report of registered provider's visit to care home

Name and Address of Care Home

Name and Address of Registered Provider



Date of visit

1. How did you find out about the experiences of people living at the care home?

2. What did people living at the care home tell you?

3.How did you find out about the experiences of people working at the care home?

4. What did people working at the care home tell you?

5. What aspects of your improvement plan did you look into?

6. What progress has been made on planned improvements?

7. What did you find out about the premises?

8. What did you find out from looking at the records of events and complaints?

9. What other improvements, if any, do you plan to make as a result of this visit?

Signed

Job Title

Date

Source : CSCI