Press Release

TIMES ARTICLE RAISES QUESTIONS ABOUT GOVERNMENT PLANS FOR HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE INSPECTION

13 June 2007

An article in The Times on Friday 8 June (‘Yet another regulator to monitor care homes and trusts’) which outlined government plans to replace the current health and social care regulators with a new super regulator, Ofcare, has raised some important questions for the sector says The Disabilities Trust chair Graham Anderson.  

Mr Anderson said ‘The Disabilities Trust aspires to provide the very highest standards in our services and we have always been fully supportive of effective regulation for public, private and third sector health and social care providers.  We do however have increasing concerns about the way in which regulation is sometimes interpreted and enforced. Very often individual inspectors may interpret the standards in widely differing ways leading to the inconsistent application of what are supposed to be national standards. In one recent case a completely inaccurate report on one of our brain injury services was posted on the Internet, despite being vigorously contested by the Trust.’

Although the story concentrated on the effect the new regulators’ powers will have on NHS bodies, the impact on other third sector providers such as the Trust could be no less severe.

Mr Anderson continued ‘We are concerned at the proposed extent of Ofcare’s new powers and given it has the power to suspend registration, impose conditions restricting the service that can be provided or instigate criminal proceedings, it is imperative that these standards are applied with strict consistency’.