Care watchdog's chief inspector quits having achieved 'a great deal'

Andrea Sutcliffe, chief inspector of the Care Quality Commission (CQC) is leaving her job at the end of this year to take up a new appointment and has described the watchdog as having “achieved a great deal in the last five years”.

Ms Sutcliffe, who has spent five years as the CQC’s first ever chief inspector of adult social care following her appointment in October 2013, will take up her new job as chief executive and registrar of the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) this January. Her successor at the CQC is yet to be found.

In her time at the CQC, she has overseen the registering, monitoring, inspection and rating of over 21,000 adult social care services across England.

Awarded a CBE for her services in the 2018 New Year’s Honours List, Andrea Sutcliffe said: “I am very sad to be leaving CQC after five challenging but very rewarding years.

“Working with colleagues across the organisation, past and present, and in coproduction with the public, providers and our partners we have achieved a great deal in the last five years. There will always be more to do, but I know that the strong team I work with will continue to drive improvement for people who use services.”

With an emphasis on whether care homes and home care services have passed her 'Mum Test', the CQC’s website reveals 399 care homes are rated ‘outstanding’, 11,698 are ‘good’, 2,629 have a ‘requires improvement’ rating and 248 are ‘inadequate’.

To date, the CQC has rated 221 homecare agencies as ‘outstanding’, 5,831 ‘good’, 919 ‘requires improvement’ and 51 ‘inadequate’.

Ms Sutcliffe joined the CQC from the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) where she was chief executive. Previously she was chief executive of the Appointments Commission and was an executive director at the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) for seven years.

In July 2016, in recognition of her work in social care, she received an Honorary Award of Doctor of Science from the University of Leeds.

Peter Wyman, chair of the CQC said: “The phrase she coined, the ‘Mum Test’: is this care good enough for your mum? – really spoke to people as a meaningful assessment of quality that was also very personal. She will be much missed.”