The State of Care 2020/21 report has recently been published by CQC. The purpose of the report is to look at the trends, share examples of good and outstanding care, and highlight where care needs to improve.

Summary of the key strands from the State of Care report and what they cover:

People’s experiences of care:

• The impact of the pandemic
• Highlighted ongoing issues of health inequalities
• People with a learning disability have faced increased challenges
• Rising demand for mental health care; specifically for children and young people
• The strain on carers has intensified, increasing workforce stress and burnout
• The health and social care workforce is depleted

Flexibility to respond to the pandemic:

• There has been a gradual push to bring systems back in line with pre-pandemic levels
• The NHS was able to expand its critical care capacity at a time of crisis
• There are concerns about ambulance handover delays in hospitals
• The ‘discharge to assess’ model for managing transfers has helped to support both health and social care services
• The vital role of adult social care was made very clear during the pandemic
• Urgent access is needed to tackle staffing issues and the increased pressures caused by staff shortages
• GP practices had to rapidly move to a more remote model of care

Ongoing quality concerns:

• Concerns that people continue to be put at risk in some services where there are signs of closed cultures
• Maternity improvements are too slow
• Continued focus needs to remain on people subject to a deprivation of liberty

Challenges for systems:

• Collaborating for better care
• Lack of integration of adult social care providers into system-level planning and decision making
• Most systems had some understanding that inequalities in care existed before the pandemic
• Workforce planning is a major priority
• Recruitment and retention continue to be a challenge
• There must be a sharp focus on developing a clearly defined career pathway and training that will enable employers to attract and retain people

We welcome CQC’s continued spotlight on the most pressing issues within the sector at a time of particular concern. Commenting on the State of Care report, Ian Trenholm, CEO of CQC said: “This year, more people than ever have contacted us with feedback and concerns about care. As we go into winter, the health and care workforce are exhausted and depleted – which has the potential to impact on the vital care they deliver. They can’t work any harder – they need support to work differently.”

If you would like to discuss the findings in the above report, or about how we can collaborate, please let us know. To get in touch, email [email protected] or call us on 03305 552233.

As a specialist, family-run recruitment business, we provide a proactive and consultative approach to recruitment within Social Care. We help organisations to target issues such as continuity of staffing, reducing spend where you have a high volume of agency usage and supporting those who have specific talent requirements or are in hard to fill locations. We can help with any immediate staffing requirements or longer-term recruitment projects to ultimately save you time and money on agency spend.

Our customers tell us that we are their main stream of important information regarding the social care sector. We want to ensure the content we are sharing regularly is relevant and useful, so we would love to hear from you! What topics that you would like us to share next?