Diary of a CQC assessment: Stage two- Mobilisation and evidence-gathering

From our experience, the CQC Assessment programme may be divided into a number of distinct stages over a period of up to 16 weeks.

Of course, this timeline will no doubt be different once the formal assessment programme develops. We are all learning at this stage – both the CQC away-team and ourselves. Mobilisation and evidence-gathering comes very early and something not to be under-estimated. We had read the feedback from Manchester and Hampshire in 2022 when they supported CQC with their very early thinking around assessment and this proved helpful. With a core team of about five people (some almost wholly dedicated to the task) and then a much wider support group, the process of gathering the evidence chest began. My Directorate Leadership Team (DLT) meetings became much more frequent and interspersed with other gatherings in support.  Regional and National (LGA/ADASS) colleagues quickly created other fora to facilitate sharing and intelligence gathering.  This is perhaps one of the most intense stages in the whole programme.

The addition of sourcing 50 cases was equally resource intensive, though for a much shorter period. Our  Head of Safeguarding made the significant undertaking of reading through them all, which provided valuable learning beyond the assessment programme itself, even though we have an established system of case file audits. Early on CQC provided a list of key documents and this evolved as the programme progressed – most were very specific eg the latest market position statement, others more open to interpretation such as the form of a self-assessment.  We also decided to create a storyboard (our own initiative) for each of the nine Quality Statements – as each runs to an average of 25 pages. All told, 48 different forms of information were submitted, though most had links embedded to others, so the evidence base was more significant than the list. Some pilot sites have submitted over 100 documents as part of their evidence chest. Needless to say, for a period of about two weeks several colleagues had no weekends or evenings which included a bank holiday! One wonders whether CQC Assessors will be more particular with respect to evidence in the formal assessment programme.