The Care Quality Commission (CQC) are running a campaign called ‘Tell Us About Your Care’.
The purpose of the campaign is to encourage carers to share their experiences of interacting with local health and care services, such as care homes, hospitals, or respite care services, with the CQC. Understanding people’s experiences – whether good or bad – is vital to ensuring that the CQC can properly review care services and see that they improve for everyone.
The CQC is the government agency responsible for maintaining care standards in the health and social care sectors. They inspect different organisations and have certain powers that allow them to sanction or report these organisations if the services they are providing don’t meet the standards expected of them.
As a carer, you will likely have had many interactions with different providers and services and have valuable experience and knowledge of these organisations as explained by carer, Jayne.
“I’m particularly keen that Carers are made more aware of the work of the CQC based on previous experience I had. My daughter was in a residential home which was poorly run with major safeguarding issues. Although I’d expressed my concerns to both the home and her Social Workers nothing was being done.
At that time my understanding was that the CQC inspected care homes, but I had no knowledge that I could contact them myself as a carer and alert them to my worries. Subsequently, after some while someone else contacted them who had concerns to and after 2 inspections the home was closed down. I so wished that I’d been aware that I could raise a complaint myself as possibly something would have been done sooner and my daughter may have suffered less damage than she ultimately did from her time in the home.
As you can imagine I’m now very keen that carers are made aware of the opportunity they have to raise complaints with the CQC about services their loved ones are using, where there may be issues”.
Jayne, Carer Voice Network Member
It is therefore extremely useful for the CQC to hear about your experiences and where particular services can do better, or where they can be used as an example of good practice for other services. By following the link provided below, you can have your voice heard by the CQC and let them know about your experiences of accessing different health and care services.
By following the link provided below, you can have your voice heard by the CQC and let them know about your experiences of accessing different health and care services.
You can tell the CQC About Your Care experience here CQC Feedback.
Please also share this link with other carers you may know in case they would like to provide feedback to the CQC.
If you would like to find out more about this campaign, you can contact Carers UK at policy@carersuk.org. See also the Carers UK guide – Complaining about a Care Service.
