Older people should be encouraged to plan ahead for their care

This picture (it's called a 'wordcloud) shows important words in a consultation about new regulations setting out standards of care in care homes and hospitals that the Care Quality Commission (CQC) registers. That's the regulator for health and social care services. There's a lot of stuff about communication, informing and listening. My view is that planning should be bigger: a lot of problems for older people in care homes and hospitals can be avoided or minimised if people are encouraged to think about and plan for the future, and if care home operators and healthcare providers are also planful. This is because they will ask questions which will encourage older residents and patients also to be planful.

The Consultation follows up on a previous starter consultation about setting up the 'fundamental standards' expected of organisations that register to provide care. This follows up on various committees of inquiry and events that have led people to say that everyone's ideas of what is basic about good care should be written into the regulations.People have suggests that the rules are too complicated and what's needed is a simple statement. You can use this link to see various versions of the consultation and the draft of the regulations.

Link to the consultation website.

Because the idea is to make a fairly basic statement, the proposals set out the blindingly obvious, but it does seem one needed to say that to at least some managers and proprietors of care services. And having basic standards of this kind, the consultation claims, allows a broader approach to regulation - you look at whether the place is caring in general, rather than going into lots of professional or legalistic detail. The questions the CQC is moving towards asking are:

• is the care safe?
• ...effective?
• ...responsive?
• caring?
• well-led?

Maybe. It seems to me that there's always a balance between being detailed so that people know where they are and not being too detailed, so that people drown in guff. But a lot of that depends on the quality of the people doing the inspecting and their managers. And my view tends to be that the best people want to do the job, not inspect how others do it.

If you want to reply to the consultation, you have to respond by 4th April.

Here's the main list of standards proposed (Chapter 4, page 15):

(a) care and treatment must reflect service users’ needs and preferences;
(b) service users must be treated with dignity and respect;
(c) care and treatment must only be provided with consent;
(d) all care and treatment provided must be appropriate and safe;
(e) service users must not be subject to abuse;
(f) service users’ nutritional needs must be met;
(g) all premises and equipment used must be safe, clean, secure, suitable for the purpose for which they are being used, and properly used and maintained;
(h) complaints must be appropriately investigated and appropriate action taken in response;
(i) systems and processes must be established to ensure compliance with these Fundamental Standards;
(j) sufficient numbers of suitably qualified, skilled and experienced staff must be deployed to meet these standards;
(k) persons employed must be of good character, have the necessary qualifications, skills and experience, and be capable of performing the work for which they are employed.

Citation: Department of Health (2014) Introducing Fundamental Standards: Consultation on proposals to change CQC registration regulations. London: Department of Health.