Care Quality Commission's State of Care report

The Care Quality Commission's (CQC) annual State of Care report was published today.

A summary and full report can be found Read the summary online and download the full report.

The findings of the report will not come as any surprise to those working within health & social care, including the overall positive note that most of the care that CQC sees across England is good quality and, overall, the quality is improving. The continued underfunding of health and social care is undoubtedly at the heart of the all too well known key points the report makes that:

• some people are struggling to get access to the mental health services they need, when they need them
• there is pressure on all health and care services in England
• more and better community services are needed to help people avoid crisis situations and the challenge for Government, Parliament, commissioners, national organisations and providers is to change the way services work together so that the right services are being commissioned to deliver what people need in their local area.

Again the finding that innovation is at the heart of some of the high quality care CQC sees – whether this is technological and specialised or simply the way in which services use smarter workforce planning to meet people’s care needs, again reinforces what we see and hear and something that will resonate with the experiences of operators, investors and funders alike.

Let’s see the Government’s green paper or even white paper on social care funding and hopefully see CQC’s next report on a new chapter where we start to see more progress on the challenges that the sector has for too long faced and exasperated by the Brexit paralysis that has existed for the last 3 years.