Strategy Days and CQC

4 December 2009

This has been another very busy week for us all but nothing I suspect compared to all of you as you prepare for Christmas in your businesses.

We held a two day Board meeting on Wednesday and Thursday where the Board planned the direction of the organisation for the coming year. There are obvious areas that we will be concentrating on particularly around the implementation of the re-registration of all care provision with the Care Quality Commission and the implementation of the new regulations and the accompanying compliance guidance also to be implemented next year.
We also intend to do a significant amount of work in the Learning Disability field (more about that in the first week of January).

On the Wednesday evening Barclays Bank very kindly hosted a reception for us at their head office in Docklands. This was a very happy evening with guests from National Care Association, some of our members and some distinguished guests from legal circles, SCIE, Skills for Care etc.
On Thursday evening I attended the Skills for Care Accolades event in central London. This was another very happy event with care providers from across the sectors rewarded for their commitment to training and the workforce. I was very pleased to see several of our members represented at the event.

There was a great deal of talk at the event about what was going on with the Care Quality Commission and what impact the criticism that they were receiving would have on the morale of the sector.

I went off to Leeds the next morning to deliver a speech about the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards. On the train on the way back I met a very senior official from the Department of Health and was able to have a bit of a moan to him about the uncertainty in the sector about the Care Quality Commission.

By Saturday morning it was announced by the Care Quality Commission that Baroness Young was to step down as Chairman of CQC (nothing to do with me!)
I hope that this will give the Care Quality Commission some breathing space.