Concerns over watchdog’s ‘alarming’ inspection cancellation figures

Last Updated: June 10, 2016By
Jonathan Bartley.

Jonathan Bartley.

Disabled campaigners and politicians have raised serious concerns about the social care inspection regime, after last week’s revelations that the number of cancellations and postponements rose by more than 360 per cent in just one year.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has so far refused to say why the number of inspections of adult social care services that were cancelled or rescheduled rose so sharply from April 2015 to April 2016.

The figures – revealed by CQC after a freedom of information request by Disability News Service (DNS) – show 25 inspections were cancelled in April 2015, rising to 103 in April 2016, while the number of inspections rescheduled increased from 25 in April 2015 to 130 in April 2016.

Despite CQC’s refusal to explain the rise, the Department of Health (DH) was in disarray this week, suggesting at one point that “ultimately the cancellations are a result of funding and fee issues, of which we would not comment”.

But when DNS tried to clarify how the fees CQC charges care services to be regulated was connected with a rise in the number of cancelled inspections, a DH spokeswoman said she was “not attempting to make a direct link between funding and cancellations”, and then that it “would be both incorrect and wrong to quote me as suggesting that fees and funding are linked”.

Despite the continuing refusal of both DH and CQC to explain why cancellations and rescheduled inspections have risen so sharply, disabled campaigners and politicians have suggested that the figures pose serious questions about the way CQC is being run.

Jonathan Bartley (pictured), the Green party’s work and pensions spokesman, who is standing alongside Caroline Lucas in a job share to lead the party, said CQC’s regime of adult social care inspection “appears to be disintegrating”.

Source: Concerns over watchdog’s ‘alarming’ inspection cancellation figures

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5 Comments

  1. Steven E James June 10, 2016 at 12:34 pm - Reply

    Surely the Care Quality Commission should be sanctioned for each cancellation as are the disabled.

  2. Catherine Cooper June 10, 2016 at 2:03 pm - Reply

    Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that some months ago CQC was due to be taken over by Remploy and they had planned to half the salaries of the trained inspectors. I imagine staff left and as a result there are not enough trained staff left to do all the inspections needed.

  3. mrmarcpc June 10, 2016 at 2:40 pm - Reply

    More abuse by the tory government!

  4. Justin Greenwood June 10, 2016 at 10:22 pm - Reply

    the problem is that when they changed the contract, what was the first issue that happened, you do the same job for half the money, potentially people with issues may also struggle to get to some of these places, may find the work allthough rewarding and valuable are then working under the auspices of a company that is hired to fail people on fitness to work medicals, so as well as being a conflict of interest in the role, there is also a trust issue, having had issues with atos myself and no doubt will probably have more in the future then the issue must be that did the cqc really think that people with vunerabilites, etc would actually work with a company hired to fail them as fit to work for half the money, I have ebe experience and i would not work with this company for any money so there is your answer, they made a bad decision and it has erroded the trust and also you only have to look at the companies that do the wca assessments and the shortcuts and amount of tribunals that happen due to bad decisions, would you want to work for a company who’s ethics in this area are questionable?

  5. philipburdekin June 11, 2016 at 10:19 pm - Reply

    The TORIES are starving the entire social system and they don’t care because they want it sold off as soon as they can, that way they win.

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