At Bettal we have been supporting new businesses register with the CQC for over 25 years.
The people who use our products for registration, the most are those applying for domiciliary care registration. The week of the 11th March 2024 has seen the launch of the CQC’s new provider portal and with it change in the way CQC registration is managed for all types of provider.
While you can undertake registration alone, at Bettal, we have flexed our expertise and adapted our CQC Registration for Home Care Service to meet the fact that not only has part of the process gone online, but what is being asked for in the way of compliant CQC policies has also changed.
This brief blog will discuss what is needed as of now for registering a CQC Domiciliary Care Service. In this blog we hope to answer the key question: “How do I register a Domiciliary care service”?
Getting online
Current providers will know that the CQC provider portal has been updated. New providers looking to register a new business need to read the guidance for CQC registration at:
From here you can also register to get a CQC provider portal log in which is necessary as the online application forms such as those for registering the service and the manager are entirely online.
Before you can start the process in earnest however, you must get a DBS certificate for the registered manager, which is either from the CQC, or if the new manager is a registered health professional one which is less than 12 months old and the details of your registration, https://www.cqc.org.uk/guidance-regulation/providers/registration/dbs-checks-cqc-registration.
Domiciliary care CQC compliant policies and procedures
As part of the process of registering a domiciliary care service you will also need to upload a number of domiciliary care CQC compliant policies and procedures. This is where Bettal comes in, we have adapted and updated our registration pack to take account of the changes to the CQC registration requirements.
What you will need for the registration includes:
• Consent Policy and Procedure
• Equality, Diversity and Human Rights Policy
• Financial Viability Statement (Unless Corporate)
• Governance Policy
• Infection Prevention and Control
• ICO registration Document
• Medicines Management Policy
• Public and Employer Liability quote or Certificate
• Recruitment Policy
• Safeguarding Policy and Procedure
• Business plan
• Duty of candour policy
• Person centred care planning policy (PCCPP)
• Quality assurance policy
• Risk management policy
• Staff training matrix
Each of these policies needs to meet the CQC requirements for registration and contain prescribed levels of information. For example the CQC require that the infection control policy contains information on how you will assess the risk of infection and prevent, detect and control its spread.
The document should include at least:
• Your systems to manage and monitor the prevention and control of infection.
• How you will assess the risk of infection –consider how susceptible the users of your service are and any risks their environment and other people may pose to them.
• Reference to the code of practice on the prevention and control of infections, issued under the Health and Social Care Act 2008.
• The protocols relating to staff vaccination status.
• Access to personal protective equipment (PPE) and what will be available.
Bettal have mapped their policies and procedures to the various requirements and are happy to stand by our existing guaranteed domiciliary care registration pledge.
What else to prepare
As well as policies and procedures, people seeking to register domiciliary care services also need to ensure that before they start the registration process, they have considered two important aspects of the process, namely:
• How your service will meet the standards set out in our quality statements.
• The aims and objectives of your service - when combined with the rest of your application, this will form your statement of purpose.
Bettal has a set of suggestions for meeting the standards set out in the quality statements as they apply to the five key questions:
• Safe.
• Effective.
• Caring.
• Responsive.
• Well-Led.
These suggestions are there to help prompt providers consider how they will, once registered, provide CQC compliant domiciliary care. We also have some specimen aims and objectives to help prompt new providers to tailor their responses during the application process. Aims and objective writing for provider applications will feature in a subsequent guidance for CQC registration blog.
Summary
Understanding the CQC domiciliary care application process has always been difficult. As the process has changed, providers may find they need some support from a tried and tested consultancy like Bettal who have decades of experience in providing not only affordable policies and procedures for domiciliary care registration but whose products are so well established we have long guaranteed domiciliary care registration for our customers.
Bettal Quality Consultancy has a comprehensive and regularly updated suite of policies, procedures and risk assessments tailored to all forms of social care provision, to support busy registered managers and their teams in registration and the provision of CQC compliant care once they have gained their CQC registration.
If you would like to know more, browse our website or get in touch:
Email: info@bettal.co.uk
Telephone: 01697741411
Peter Ellis MA MSc BSc(Hons) RN
Consultant, Bettal Quality Consultancy