CQC vows to bridge gap between health and social care

The head of the new Care Quality Commission, Cynthia Bower, has vowed to tackle the existing gap between the nation’s health and social care services. The CQC – the new ‘super regulator’ of England’s care services – aims to improve standards across all areas of care, but is starting with a review into healthcare services that are available to care home residents. Charities and campaigners for the elderly have long been drawing attention to the problems faced by this vulnerable group, including the difficulty of accessing primary health services such as dentists, GPs, nurses and dementia specialists. In an interview with BBC News, reported on their website, Ms Bower admits that these problems and the UK’s ageing population present ‘the biggest challenge facing services in the 21st century...more and more people are going to need access to that care that spans across both social services and the NHS.’ However, she believes that the new single regulator will help in this respect as this will ...’focus the minds on the issue...(and) look at how the two are working together.’

The review of standards in care homes, launched on 1 April, will look at both public and private sector homes. It will focus on the quality of primary health care services as well as the level of choice available to residents. Ms Bower has said that the CQC will proactively respond to its findings and will fine homes or close services where necessary. The review has been warmly welcomed by charities such as Age Concern, which comments: ‘Too many older people and their families continue to be horribly let down by health and care services. The quality of care they experience is all too often not up to scratch, so it’s encouraging that this is one of the new commission’s first reviews.’^*

The care homes review is likely to be followed by three other special reviews also focusing on the ‘crossover territory’ between health and social care: care for stroke patients, support for people suffering from mental illness and services for families with disabled children.

The CQC’s work is mirrored by the Government’s launch of 16 pilot projects which also aim to improve the way that health and social care services work together. The £4 million scheme will experiment with different ways of integrating services, rather than retaining the traditional boundary between health and social care, to see how standards for both NHS patients and local authority service users can be improved. Each of the 16 projects will tackle the most pressing health needs in their area including dementia, care for the elderly, substance abuse and end of life care. The pilots were launched on 1 April and will run for two years, after which they will be evaluated and the most successful care models integrated into national best practice. To read more and to find out where the 16 pilot projects are taking place, click here.

^* Age Concern and Help the Aged, now united as one charity, have issued a ‘Seven Point Plan’ for the CQC which can be read on Age Concern’s website.