ASSURE

Local authorities are responsible for the organisation of social care. These responsibilities are set out in the Care Act 2014.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and social care in England. It has a legal role to inspect health and social care providers to make sure that people are receiving safe and high-quality care. In 2022 a new law expanded the remit of the CQC. The CQC now has a duty to assess and review how local authorities are delivering their social care duties. This is called assurance. 

• Aims

  What questions are we trying to answer?

  In our project, we will find out why CQC assurance of local authorities has been introduced. We want to know how it was expected to improve practice and whether or not it has achieved this. 

  We will be guided by the following research questions:  

  1. Is CQC assurance the right process to assess whether local authorities are doing what the Care Act 2014 said they should do? 
  2. How has the lived experience of people who draw on care been included in the CQC assurance process?
  3. What, if anything, has changed in practice because of CQC assurance of local authorities? 
  4. What impact is CQC assurance having on how local authority practitioners engage with local social care systems?

   

• Methods

  How will we answer our research questions? 

  We will start with a national focus. We will look at the aims of CQC assurance and the thinking behind how it would improve social care. We will talk to people involved in designing the new assurance process. We will also look at documents on local authority assurance. 

  Then at a local level we will work in four case sites where local authorities have been through the CQC assurance process. We will explore the influence of assurance on what local authorities do and how assurance has affected the local care system. To do this, we will talk to staff, look at meeting papers and observe meetings that are publicly available. We are interested in how local authority assurance brings in the lived experience of people drawing on care and we will talk to local user-led organisations about their involvement with the assurance process.
   

• Planned outputs

  What will we do with our findings? 

  Our findings will be developed into publications for other academics and for people working in social care. We will work with regional branches of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services to share our findings. We will develop resources that will support local authorities to prepare for future CQC assurance processes. Our findings will be shared with CQC to help them understand how assurance could be improved.