Quality assurance

In 2022 The Health and Care Act (2022) was introduced. This created new powers for the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

The CQC are responsible for assessing how well local authorities meet their duties under Part 1 of the Care Act (2014).

The CQC use an assessment framework for this and have published guidance on Local Authorities assessments.

Each Local Authority will be assessed against four themes

• Theme 1 - How we work with people
• Theme 2 - How we provide support 
• Theme 3 - How we keep people safe
• Theme 4 - How we led

Five key questions

The assessment framework is made up of five key questions and, under each key question, a set of quality statements.

The five key questions are the things CQC ask of all health and social care services. 

They ask if our services are:

• safe
• effective
• caring
• responsive to people's needs
• well-led

Quality statements

Quality statements are the commitments that providers, commissioners and system leaders should live up to. Expressed as ‘we statements’, they show what is needed to deliver high-quality, person-centred care.

To meet CQC assessment guidelines, we have created two posts to ensure we are providing the type of care we can be proud of. The team prepare all the evidence we need for the Care Quality Commission with our service leads and the directorate leadership team.

Before the change in legislation, we had a positive approach to Quality Assurance and created an Assurance Framework. The framework was created to monitor and improve the quality of care provided to people we support. 

It ensures that our services meet standards of quality, safety and effectiveness. 

The Quality Assurance team will

• complete team audits and case file audits to check how well we are doing and where we would like to improve
• hold a staff network for open conversations with staff about the quality of our services
• ask experts by experience, what they think of our services
• collate all our evidence into learning briefings with clear action plans to improve
• create a culture where quality assurance is everybody’s business

• we want to ensure people are safe
• we want to improve the wellbeing and quality of life of people we work with
• we want to maintain good standards, celebrate good work and, where required, make improvements
• we want to demonstrate accountability – assuring transparency and responsibility
• we want to develop staff confidence, ensuring we all have necessary skills to do our job well

The Health and Care Act (2022) empowered the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to assess how well local authorities meet their duties under Part 1 of the Care Act (2014) using their single assessment framework.

Since the pilot assessments began in 2023, CQC has now notified over 100 local authorities, with over 50 already assured and nearly 40 reports published. The full benchmarking process is expected to be completed by the end of 2025.

North Somerset process timeline

• 24 June 2024 – notification from CQC received; Initial Response (IR) submitted within three weeks
• 23 September 2024 – notification of onsite visit received
• 31 October 2024 – Senior Leadership Team presentation delivered to CQC
• 2-6 December 2024 – onsite visit
• 13 February 2025 – draft report received
• 6 March 2025 – factual accuracy response submitted
• 19 March 2025 – final report received
• 16 May 2025 - final report published

The report has now been published on the CQC website. Please see our press release for more information. 

As a part of our preparation for the assurance visit from CQC, we gathered evidence for our information submission and prepared our self-assessment.

Our self-assessment was coproduced by the senior leadership team. This document 

• reflects our values
• outlines the areas of good practice
• indicates areas where some development work is required 
• highlights our plans and ambitions

If you have any questions or queries around our quality assurance team or processes, please contact us via email.