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Single Assessment Framework version

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GO Online: Inspection toolkit

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Well-led

Well-led looks at the culture, strategy, values and governance of your service. The CQC will look at your managers and leaders and how they ensure the organisations continues to improve, engaging with others to deliver the best care possible.

Click on the sections below to see what the CQC will be asking when inspecting Well-led, as well as our recommendations, practical examples, and resources to help you prepare.

Introducing Well-led

Duration 01 min 46 sec

It will only be possible to deliver a safe, effective, caring, and responsive service if your organisation is Well-led.

Well-led looks at if the service has the right owners, managers, leaders, and governance arrangements to meet or exceed CQC expectations. It’s the biggest area of CQC inspection.

The CQC inspection will look at multiple factors including:

  • Shared direction and culture … which takes a closer look at your culture, as well as openness and honesty across all levels of the service

  • Capable, compassionate, and inclusive leaders … looking at the leadership capability, capacity, and integrity
  • Governance, management, and sustainability … including how your systems and processes ensure effective management

  • Workforce equality, diversity, and inclusion … which will explore what you are doing to ensure inclusivity and fairness
  • Freedom to speak up … how you empower people to ensure their voice is heard
  • Partnerships and communities … how you collaborate with others and work seamlessly together in the care that is delivered
  • Learning, improvement, and innovation … what you are doing to monitor and drive forward improvements in care
  • Environmental sustainability – sustainable development … what you are doing to offset the negative impact of activities in the community

GO Online brings together recommendations, practical examples, and resources to help you meet the CQC inspection focus related to Well-led. Take a look at what’s available.

Watch the film here: https://vimeo.com/790356761

Well-led - What outstanding care looks like

Duration 03 min 24 sec

Vivian Laurent, General Manager, Eglantine Villa

  • Well-led is very important because if a home needs to be outstanding then it needs to be well-led. The leadership has to come from the management.
  • I ensure that this service is Well-led by making sure we follow the policy and procedures, look at following the quality audit in the home, getting feedback from the staff, the residents, the relatives around. If there are things not working, learn from there.

Ken Rogers, Husband of resident - Eglantine Villa

  • All of them work endlessly to make this place what it is, and you can only say “well done” to them. As a manager himself, he’s always a friendly guy, you can approach him at any time, he’ll come out and have fun with you. It’s more like a big family gathering here and this is what makes this place tick.

Katie Brennan, Registered Branch Manager – Carefound Home Care

  • I think we achieved Outstanding for Well-led because we showed that we have really good policy and procedures in place and we sometimes go a little bit above and beyond of what we need to do to make sure that staff feel supported and that the management team are listening to staff and clients, and acting on their feedback.
  • We are really lucky here that we have an experienced managed team in care and that then will feed through to the staff team who, if they are feeling supported and valued, it will make the service run that much better for the clients.

Hayley Gill, Professional Carer - Carefound Home Care

  • I feel that Carefound always really support me in my role. They are always wanting to know how I’m doing.
  • I am in the office quite a bit as well and I know that Katie or Amy who is the Care Manager are always willing to speak to you to make sure you are doing okay and if there are any concerns that we tend to have? We know that we can always go to them and they will try to support us anyway they can.

Mike Schofield, Registered Service Manager – Shared Lives – Lancashire Country Council

  • We ensure we keep up with best practice by ensuring we do a lot of benchmarking with our colleagues across the country. We also have regular updates in terms of any new legislation that comes out.

Lydia Ferguson, Shared Lives Officer – Shared Lives – Lancashire Country Council

  • My role is a county role which means that I can go and sit with all the different teams and listen to what is coming up on a daily basis.
  • I hold different groups as well, so we have individual members from individual teams who all come together to share their good practice and ideas and things.
  • We listen to carers. We are always doing surveys as well, asking them what they really think about Shared Lives and how we can improve.

Katie Brennan, Registered Branch Manager – Carefound Home Care

  • It’s really important that we build a really good relationship with other healthcare professionals. They are very involved in the clients lives and care - as we are as well – so we are constantly reaching out to pharmacists, GP practices.
  • We have nurses who will also come in and do specialist training for us and having charities come in and give talks is really important because we can only better our service with the help of others who are more specialised in those areas.

Watch the film here: https://vimeo.com/485880828

Shared direction and culture

How to have a shared vision, strategy and culture that is based on transparency, equity, equality and human rights, diversity and inclusion, engagement, and understanding challenges and the needs of people and our communities.

Capable, compassionate and inclusive leaders

How to have inclusive leaders who understand the context in which we deliver care and embody the culture and values and have the skills, knowledge, experience and credibility to lead effectively.

Freedom to speak up

How to foster a positive culture where people feel that they can speak up and that their voice will be heard.

Governance, management and sustainability

How to have clear responsibilities, roles, systems of accountability and good governance to manage and deliver good quality, sustainable care.

Workforce equality, diversity and inclusion

How to value diversity in your workforce, working towards an inclusive and fair culture by improving equality and equity for people who work for you.

Environmental sustainability

How to understand any negative impact of our activities on the environment and strive to make a positive contribution in reducing it and support people to do the same.

Partnerships and communities

How to collaborate and work in partnership, so your services work seamlessly for people. This includes sharing information and learning with partners and collaborate for improvement.

Learning, improvement and innovation

How to focus on continuous learning, innovation and improvement across your organisation and the local system. This includes encouraging creative ways of delivering equality of experience, outcome and quality of life for people.


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