Have the Care Quality Commission got things wrong?

The new Essential Standards of Quality and Safety Regulations, published by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), set out the Regulatory Activities responsible for indicating Registration and Inspection by the Care Quality Commission.

In short, the Regulatory Activities define weather a service requires to be registered with CQC.  Under these new regulations, Domiciliary Care Agencies have a Regulatory Activity of “Personal Care “.  If personal care is undertaken, you must register, simple enough so far!

Now, for the first time ever, we have a true definition of “Personal Care” within this new legislation, but surprisingly there seems to be something missing from this!  The new Definition does not include Medication Administration or Prompting; it also does not include shopping or any other form of Financial Management.  Huge mistake here!

Let me explain why:

As an agency, if I am providing services of a Personal Care nature, then any other aspect of my care service must adhere to the Regulations specific to those areas.  This is because I provide Personal Care services which are a Regulatory Activity.  Any regular additional service such as Shopping, Financial Management or indeed Medication Administration will automatically fall under my inspection and compliance requirements within the Essential Standards of Quality and Safety Regulations.

So for example, if I am tasked with assisting with feeding a Service User, in addition to administering Medication, the Feeding element dictates registration under the new legislation, and the Medication element is automatically required to be delivered in accordance to the new regulations as a part of the whole care delivery.

However…..If I am only looking to oversee Service Users Finances’, their shopping, or even their entire Medication needs, providing there is no Personal Care duties delivered, I am exempt from registration as an organisation.  I have no guidance to follow, no regulations to adhere to and no legal responsibilities to meet whatsoever.

I can see this, in addition to the promotion of Personal Assistants, creating a whole lot of Safeguarding Issues across the industry!  My worry is that with so much opportunity for unsupervised care in the community, how will we even know when these potential Safeguarding incidents do take place?

From my experience, it’s not often the Abuser reports themselves…….

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