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Single Assessment Framework version

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GO Online: Inspection toolkit

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Equity in access

Being responsive means that your service is able to ensure the people you support can access the care, support, and treatment they need when they need it.

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 Equity in access

Duration 01 min 36 sec

Being responsive means that your service ensures people can access the care, support, and treatment they need when they need it.

Such care will need to be provided consistently, so you will need to have the systems and support in place to enable this to be the case. This will be reliant on effective relationships with health and social care partners, as well as the wider support in the community.

The CQC will want to know how you support people to access other services at the right time and when needed. Be prepared to explain in interviews and back up with documented evidence how this has happened.

Inspectors may also want to know how your service supports different people around reasonable adjustments, ensuring premises are accessible and responding to emergency unplanned care needs.

They’ll be looking for a responsive and flexible approach to providing care, rather than a one size fits all approach.

The CQC will interview the people you support about their experiences, as well as others from within your service but also the wider community. In residential services there may be observations too.

Expect inspectors to look at documented evidence in care plans and reviews, as well as advocacy and support records and your engagement with other services.

To learn more about how you can meet this area of CQC inspection, take a look at GO Online.

Watch the film here: https://vimeo.com/788208787

Recommendations

These recommendations act as a checklist to what the CQC will be looking for. Skills for Care has reviewed hundreds of inspection reports and identified these recommendations as recurring good practice in providers that meet CQC expectations.

The CQC is non-prescriptive, which means they don’t tell you what must be done in order to meet their Quality Statement. These recommendations are not intended to be a definitive list and some recommendations might not be relevant to your service. We hope they help you reflect on what evidence you might wish to share with the CQC.

Equity in access

  • We ensure care and treatment is always accessible, timely and in line with best practice. Where physical, digital or communication barriers exist, we support people to overcome these.
  • We can evidence how we ensure equal access to care is available to the different individuals we support. This removes barriers, delays, and protects people’s rights.
  • We support people to ensure that all services that they access make reasonable adjustments, including our own. Where adjustments have been made, we can evidence how these have benefitted the individual(s).
  • Our manager and staff have a good understanding of obstacles to timely care and how to navigate these. This includes how discrimination and inequality can disadvantage different groups.
  • We are able to identify and escalate any unnecessary blockages in the system to minimise delays.
  • We ensure the people we support and fully inform about progress related to their ongoing care and support, including appointment schedules and associated actions.
  • We work closely with our partners and the wider system to minimise the impact of cancellations delaying people receiving timely care.
  • Where appropriate to our service, we can provide evidence of how we have made adjustments to ensure our premises are fully accessible to people’s individual needs.
  • We are suitably resourced and equipped to challenge ineffective parts of the wider health and social care system to enable people to receive more responsive care.
  • We collate and review feedback from people’s experiences to inform how we might address future barriers for them and others.

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Skills for Care Ltd, West Gate, Grace Street, Leeds, LS1 2RP. Registered company no. 3866683. Registered in England charity no. 1079836.
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