Skills for Care
Top

Single Assessment Framework version

All services - change

GO Online: Inspection toolkit

Print this page

Treating people as individuals

The CQC will expect everybody you care for to be treated as an individual, with support shaped around their own preferences. Understanding what is important to an individual is essential, including meeting their personal, cultural, social, and religious needs.

The following film provides a summary of this area of inspection. It can help you and your teams learn about what will be inspected and what is important to demonstrate to deliver good or outstanding care.

Introducing Treating people as individuals

Duration 01 min 41 sec

Everybody you support will have their own needs and preferences that will be important to them.

The CQC will want to know how your services treats everybody you support as an individual and how you enable your staff team to demonstrate this in the care that they provide.

How you involve people, their families, and potentially their advocates in understanding their backgrounds and shaping care around cultural beliefs and other factors important to them will need to be demonstrated.

The inspection may focus on people’s protected characteristics, including support provided related to age, disability, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion and belief, sex, and sexual orientation.

Inspectors may also explore what have you done to protect people’s human rights. Having examples at hand and evidence to share will be important.

Of course, there will be cross-over with other areas of inspection, most likely around assessing need and person-centred care. The evidence you provide and associated documentation will need to be consistent.

CQC inspectors will want to interview people, their families, friends and advocates to better understand how the person is treated as an individual. Observations will also occur in some care environments.

To help you meet this area of CQC inspection, take a look at the recommendations, examples, and resources available in GO Online.

Watch the film here: https://vimeo.com/787631241

CQC focus

Inspection

What is the CQC Quality Statement?

We treat people as individuals and make sure their care, support and treatment meets their needs and preferences, taking account of their strengths, abilities, aspirations, culture and unique backgrounds and protected characteristics.

What sub-topics might the CQC look at when inspecting this?

  • Personal, cultural, social and religious needs
  • Supporting communication and choice

How does this part of the inspection relate to CQC Regulations and guidance?

How will the CQC gather evidence?

The CQC will primarily gather evidence by:

  • People's Experience
  • Feedback from staff and leaders
  • Feedback from partners (Supported living services only)
  • Processes
  • Observation (Care homes and supported living)

Read more about this Quality Statement

  • The CQC have published further insight into what this Quality Statement means, including the I Statements and which legislation it relates to on their website here.