Improvements to oral health in care homes

We have found that care homes have made improvements to the way they look after oral health.

Oral health enhances quality of life and helps make sure people can eat, drink, take medication and stay healthy.

Our 2019 Smiling matters report found that steps were often not being taken to make sure people got the oral health care they need to make sure that they are pain-free and that their dignity was respected. We also found that joined-up practice between care homes and dentists was uncommon and people often found it difficult to access routine NHS dental care.

Our follow up review found that care homes are much more aware of guidance, and that more progress has been made on the number of care plans that fully cover oral health.

But we remain concerned that people living in care homes are missing out on vital care from dental practitioners both at the right time and in the right place.

Care home providers also told us that not enough dentists were able or willing to visit care homes to treat people who may be less mobile.

Improving how we listen to, learn from and act on concerns

Two new reports setting out how we can improve the ways we listen to, learn from and act on concerns have been published on our website.

We commissioned the reports following an employment tribunal case brought by Mr Shyam Kumar.

The findings of this tribunal, which we accepted in full, were highly critical of us, finding that the decision to disengage Mr Kumar was materially influenced by the concerns he raised. During the same period, other issues were being raised around how we listened to and acted on concerns, including from our own staff.

The first report gives the findings from an independent review which we asked Zo Leventhal KC to lead. This looks into the handling of protected disclosures shared by Mr Kumar, alongside a sample of other information of concern shared with us by health and care staff.

The second report looks at whether there are areas of culture or process within CQC that need to be improved. As part of this, we committed to looking at whether race or any other protected characteristic has any impact on how we treat information of concern, reflecting on findings from Mr Kumars employment tribunal.

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. At the moment, you can feed back on the following:

Young Champions

The CQC Young Champions had their first face to face meeting in February. A Young Champion has written a blog about the day, their experience of meeting the group and what it's like working on a CQC project.

Read the full blog on CitizenLab and share your ideas about what the group should be tackling around children and young peoples care.

User research opportunities

We are updating the way we present our assessments of services and need your help with new designs for our website.

See CitizenLab to find out more about a paid opportunity to take part in user research with us.

If you'd like to find out more about these projects or other work taking place on CitizenLab, sign up using the links below. When you join, 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.

Insight report: English systems in winter

As we begin our formal regulation of integrated care systems (ICSs) and local authorities, we want to share details about some of the variation we see in different parts of the country.

The information in this new Insight report describes some of the pressures services and system leaders face and how that pressure affects people who need care. We have used information from our own data collections, a new survey of adult social care providers and data from partners organisations to consider some of the challenges facing local health and social care systems.

Previously, we have pointed to the importance of system-level planning that includes all health and care services to address population needs and health and care inequalities. In our new assessment role across local systems we will share what we know, and what could be informative, for integrated care boards and the way they use the data they hold for their long-term planning.

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.

Our approach to assessing integrated care systems and local authorities

The Health and Care Act 2022 gave us new powers that allow us to provide a meaningful and independent assessment of care at a local authority and integrated care system level.

We have now published information about our approach to local authority and integrated care system assessments. We have also shared our interim guidance for our assessment of local authorities.

We have worked with a range of partners to design this work, including people who use health and social care services and their families, providers, local and central government and the NHS.

The Health and Care Act 2022 says that our approach to assessing local authorities and integrated care systems is subject to the approval of the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. We are currently awaiting this approval.

Updates to CQC's executive team

We have made some changes to our executive team to help support the organisation as we deliver our ambitious strategy and change the way we work.

The changes are as follows:

Deputy Chief Executive

We have reviewed the Chief Operating Officer role and the job title will now be Deputy Chief Executive. This interim position will continue to be held by Kate Terroni.

Chief Inspector of Adult Social Care and Integrated Care

As Kate Terroni focuses more fully on her role as Deputy Chief Executive, we need to make sure that Adult Social Care and integrated care is given the right level of attention and expertise at a senior level. Therefore, we will be recruiting a new Chief Inspector of Adult Social Care and Integrated Care.

Chief Inspector of Health care

This role will merge the previous roles of Chief Inspector of Hospitals and Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Sean O Kelly will continue in this position. This reflects the wider changes were seeing in how health and social care is delivered, particularly across primary and secondary care.

However, we know it is vital that we continue to ensure that the voices of people using services and those working in primary medical services continue to be heard well, so Sean will be supported by his senior leadership team to do this.

Do you work in health or social care?

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