The Care and Quality Commission (CQC) has today launched its new strategy, setting out commitments for how it regulates the health and social care services used by many autistic people – putting people who use services at the centre.

Background

CQC engaged with health and care providers, people who use services, strategic partners and other organisations, including The National Autistic Society, over the past 18 months to develop the strategy. It sets out how CQC will change from 2021. Whilst CQC’s main role as a regulator won’t change, the way it works will be different, with the aim of improving care for everyone who uses it.

What’s in the strategy

The strategy has four main themes, including:

People and communities: CQC will regulate services based on people’s needs and experiences, focusing on what is important to individuals.

Smarter regulation: CQC will get better at keeping up with changes in health and care services, and will also keep looking at different sorts of information so that inspectors know how good each service is all the time - rather than just when they visit. This will include using better technology and making its ratings (or scores) for services more up to date.
Safety through learning: CQC will focus on safety and empowering people to speak up if they think a service isn’t safe for the people it supports.

Accelerating improvement: CQC will encourage health and care services, as well as local areas, to access support when they need it to improve quality of care.
There are two “core ambitions” which cover the four themes. These are new things that the CQC hopes to be able to do:

Assessing local systems: CQC will look at the quality of care in each area, checking how well health and care services work together, to ensure people can access high-quality care close to where they live. Currently, the CQC only regulates the providers of services. This would mean that the CQC could look more widely at gaps in services and support in local areas, which could be really important for autistic people as we know that there aren’t enough services to meet autistic people’s needs. 

Tackling inequalities in health and care: CQC will aim to make sure everyone can get the same good quality care. For example, people will get the same care regardless of their age or ethnic background. This is important as we know this has impacted disabled people, including autistic people, and not everyone has been able to enjoy the same kind of care across age groups and different backgrounds. 

Next steps

In the first year of the strategy, from this point in 2021, CQC will focus on laying the foundations for what it wants to achieve later. This will include looking at how it monitors risk and how each local area understands the needs of the people who live there. 
Over the next month, CQC will begin updating on improvements it’s making to how it monitors services, as well as publishing more detail about the changes it will make.
CQC says it hopes its new strategy will ensure that people who use services and their families understand the standards of care they have a right to access, be confident that CQC is aware of the quality of care where they live, know how to find information on the care they access and know how to speak out about their experiences. This will especially include adults who live in care homes or residential services for autistic people and/or people with a learning disability and their families.

We think it’s important that CQC looks at what support is and isn’t available in each area. This is sometimes called the “care market”. We know that one of the biggest problems during the pandemic – and previously - was the lack of supply of social care services for autistic people. Our Left Stranded report found that families had to step in to fill the gap, and we hope CQC’s work over the coming years will go some way to address issues within the care market too, in order to ensure the social care needs of autistic adults are met.
We also hope that autistic people and people with a learning disability are able to have their voices heard in the CQC’s important work. This means that the CQC needs to talk about its work in accessible ways, as well as making sure that autistic people who need support to communicate their views are heard too.

Our response 

Tim Nicholls, Head of Policy, Public Affairs and Research Partnerships at the National Autistic Society, said: “This strategy is an important step in putting people who use services, including autistic people, at the centre of the regulation of health and social care services.
 
“CQC has an important role to play in making sure services are safe and of a high enough quality for the people who need them. We hope this strategy will go some way to ensuring people who use services, and their families, feel safe, protected and able to speak up. The strategy also paves the way for the CQC to make sure that the lack of services – the biggest issue autistic adults face in getting help from social care – is finally tackled.”
 
“We’ll be working with CQC to make sure that this strategy leads to real improvements for autistic people and their families across health and social care.”

Further information

• Read the CQC’s new strategy from 2021 here.
• For confidential support and advice visit the Help and Support section of our website.
• To find out more about local and national services for autistic people and their families, visit our Autism Services Directory.
• To find out more about the UK’s only autism-specific quality assurance programme for all those providing services to autistic people, visit our Autism Accreditation page.