Diary of a CQC assessment: Stage four – The onsite visit
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Glen Garrod is the Executive Director for Adult Care and Community Wellbeing at Lincolnshire County Council. He shares here his personal reflections on taking part in the first pilot CQC inspection of a local authority adult social care department.
The on-site visit lasted two intensive days with two days further for Teams interviews and there were up to three sets of interviews running each day.
One point of note is that even after the on-site had ended and virtual meetings completed there were a number of follow up e-mails with information requests that arose as a result of the on-site. As such it is very useful to avoid feeling that one is at the end of a process until it very clearly is!
What worked very well – albeit serendipitously – was that all the teams interviewed came into the leadership room after their interviews for a debrief. The energy and enthusiasm (passion) was palpable and rather humbling. Another learning point from Children’s colleagues which worked well was a nightly briefing note on how the day had progressed during the on-site. Our comms lead produced the bulletin and this helped those being interviewed the following day. I was impressed that the programme for the on-site (apart from the meet and greet undertaken by my PA, Lead AD and myself) started with an hour-long interview with my Principle Social Worker (PSW) and his senior colleague from the PSW Unit. I was very much at the back end of the programme which gave the impression of the focus being on practice, people’s experience and how well supported they felt within the Council. Whilst the programme for Lincolnshire had not been purposely designed this way, CQC colleagues were interested in the symbolism associated with ‘who goes first’. It will be interesting to see if future assessment visits begin with the PSW. One further personal reflection – at my interview the lead inspector commented that CQC colleagues involved in the interviews found it difficult to know which organisation people came from – I took this to be a profound compliment on how colleagues work together here! I was also impressed that CQC repeatedly asked colleagues in about how well supported they felt at work and about opportunities for development.