Annual assessment of adult care scrapped, says CQC

Town hall chiefs have welcomed the government’s announcement that the Care Quality Commission will no longer conduct an annual assessment of councils’ adult care under the existing framework, and called for the removal of the equivalent assessments of children’s services conducted by Ofsted.

The announcement in relation to adult social care was made by Minister of State for Care Services Paul Burstow at the National Children and Adult Services Conference.

“The government’s new approach will see a shift towards more sector-led assessment, with councils holding greater responsibility for driving improvement,” the CQC said.

The watchdog insisted that it would “still have an important role to play, which will be defined over coming months. We will share our plans as they develop.”

Cllr David Parsons, chairman of the Local Government Group’s improvement board, said: “The scrapping of the annual assessment of adult care is a positive step towards the common-sense inspection approach which councils have been arguing for. The next logical step is to get rid of the equivalent assessments of children’s services carried out by Ofsted.”

He added: “Keeping an eye on how vital services are doing is important. Councils want to know they are doing the best they possibly can when it comes to offering help and support to older and more vulnerable residents, but collecting data and dealing with external inspection is not the best way of improving care.”

Parsons argued that at a time when public money is under huge pressure, councils “should not be forced to spend money ticking boxes when that funding could be spent instead on frontline services”.