Information on the new fundamental standard on visiting people in health and social care services

We've published new guidance to help providers understand and meet the new fundamental standard on visiting and accompanying in care homes, hospitals, and hospices.

The new information also sets out what people using health and social care services and their families, friends or advocates can expect.

The guidance follows a consultation that we ran earlier this year. We asked people to comment on our draft guidance about the new fundamental standard. We did not ask about the scope and content of the visiting legislation itself, as the Department for Health and Social Care's carried out their own, separate consultation on this.

Join us! Work for CQC

CQC staff have a wide range of skills and work across many disciplines.

Find out about roles within CQC, Healthwatch England and the Office of the National Guardian.

Current vacancies include:

Benefits include generous leave entitlement, NHS or Nest pension schemes and a wide range of employee discounts.

Most roles offer flexible locations with the choice to be home-based. See the individual job listings for more information.

Review panels looking at the care and treatment of people in long-term segregation to start in late May

We recently announced that the Department of Health and Social Care asked us to take a lead on Independent Care (Education) and Treatment Reviews (ICETRs) for the next 2 years.

Review panels will start in late May. We will focus on ensuring that people who are autistic or who have a learning disability have an independent care and treatment review to move out of long-term segregation. Our wider aim of this programme is to reduce the use of long-term segregation nationally.

This work follows our Out of Sight report, published in 2020. The report highlighted the need to reduce the use of restrictive practices for people with mental ill health, people with a learning disability and autistic people.

Guidance published on how we will assess the well-led key question for NHS trusts

Good leadership has a significant impact on staff morale and patient experiences of care.

Working with NHS England, we have now published new guidance that describes how we assess the well-led key question. It will help NHS trusts and foundation trusts understand what good leadership looks like.

The guidance incorporates key developments in health and care policy and best practice. It includes expectations around system working, freedom to speak up and continuous improvement.

This guidance, alongside the Single Assessment Framework, replaces the previous inspection framework for NHS trusts and foundation trusts.

Help shape our work

Our CitizenLab service helps you shape the work that we do.

CitizenLab gives you an easy way to get involved with our work and share your ideas and opinions. We use it to bring together groups of people, collect your views, conduct surveys and run quick polls.

What you tell us helps us understand the things that are important to you. We can use what we learn to make our services and information better for everyone.

The things we're working on change all the time. Join using the links below and you'll be sent an email when new information or projects are added. You can also sign in to see what activities are currently live and ready for you to take part in.

Do you work in health or social care?

Sign up to our other newsletters and follow us on X/Twitter to make sure you always get the latest information from us.