Key inspections
This is the most thorough type of inspection when we look at all
of the key aspects of the service.
We won’t usually tell you in advance when we will visit.
Before the inspection, we look at all the information we have on
your service, such as information about:
- concerns, complaints or safeguarding matters
- incidents
- previous inspections and reports.
We will look at what you tell us in your annual quality
assurance assessment about how you think your service is
doing.
We do this to see how well the service has performed in the past
and how much you have improved it.
We will find out the views of people who use your service, their
families and any professionals involved.
This may be through talking to them or sending out surveys.
Our assessment of the quality of your service is based on all
this information, plus our own observations during our visit.
At the end of the visit to your service we will discuss our
preliminary findings with you.
Following a key inspection we will write an inspection report
that will set out what your care service does well and what needs
to improve.
We will also give your service a quality rating, ranging from
zero stars (poor) to three stars (excellent).
How often do we inspect?
How often we inspect your service depends on how we judge its
quality, but every new service gets a key inspection in its first
six months.
Key inspections are major assessments of the
quality of a service and any risk that it might present.
Frequency of inspections
| Quality rating |
Frequency |
|
3 star *** (Excellent)
|
One key inspection at
least once every three years
|
|
2 star **
(Good)
|
One key inspection at
least once every two years
|
|
1 star *
(Adequate)
|
One key inspection at
least once a year
|
|
0 star
(Poor)
|
Two key inspections a year
|
Where we are considering enforcement
action we may do more key inspections. In addition to key
inspections we may also carry out random or thematic inspection
visits.