Care Commission To Consider Grading Scheme

David Wiseman, Director of Strategic Development at the Care Commission said: “We are obviously extremely interested in what is being developed by the regulator in England and will be closely monitoring the results and outcomes.  The Care Commission is currently developing its own system for assessing the quality of care services and we will be piloting later in the year in a number of care homes for older people.

“Those care homes will be graded against four main quality themes − all of which will be linked to the National Care Standards set by Scottish Ministers. The themes will be: Quality of Life; Quality of Environment; Quality of Staffing; Quality of Management and Leadership.

“This is important, because we believe it represents greater choice for potential users than a single, overall rating. Our research strongly suggests that potential users are not all looking for the same thing − rather, that certain aspects of the same home are more or less important  in varying degrees for different users.

“We have also given careful consideration to the actual grading itself and have opted for a six-level system which is currently used very effectively by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education.

“During the pilot scheme, the quality assessment will be submitted by care providers on a self-assessment basis. That self-assessment will only be considered valid if it can be clearly shown that care users and carers have been actively involved in agreeing the rating.  Furthermore, the rating will not be approved by the Care Commission until the service has been fully inspected by our staff to establish the validity of the self-assessment.

“Importantly we have tailored the pilot scheme to best match the findings from a major consultation exercise carried out last year with care service users, service providers and care workers.

“This is an exciting step forward for the Care Commission which we hope will be extremely beneficial to existing and potential care users, their friends and families and carers. We will be able to better assess the success and reaction when the pilot period concludes in March 2007.”