Participation commitments outlined by Wales care regulator

A tougher but more collaborative approach to underperforming care services is being backed by Wales’s care regulator in order to drive up standards.

Imelda Richardson, the chief inspector of CSSIW (Care and Social Services Inspectorate Wales), believes that extreme cases of failing services can be avoided by not being afraid to work in partnership with the public.

As she explains: “The findings from the reviews of Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust and Winterbourne View have reinforced the importance of regulation and inspection in ensuring that our most vulnerable people are safe and receive high quality services.”

Ms Richardson sees “involving people” as crucial for care regulation to meet its future challenges and sets out the body’s commitment to achieving “safer and better services”.

She continues: “Seeing services ‘first-hand’ remains at the core of our work and during the year [2013] we delivered our inspection programme by visiting 3,990 settings to inspect the services being provided. This included at least one unannounced inspection of every care home for older people in Wales.

“We have got tougher about tackling poor services. We cannot be in every home, nursery or service every day so people who use services, families, carers – are our eyes and ears on the ground and our allies in driving out poor care”.

“We can’t investigate complaints about the care individuals are receiving, but we can advise them where to go. When we investigate concerns we look at how it is meeting the needs of all the people using the service, to assess whether there are wider problems.”

Key to the regulator’s future plans is a successful ‘early warning system’, outlined last year as part of a ‘Participation Plan’, while the CSSIW has also established a National Advisory Board to bring together those individuals who have experience of care service and delivery.