CQC Caring Key Question: A Practical Preparation Guide

The Caring key question considers whether staff involve and treat people with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect. The strongest evidence comes from how people consistently experience the service, especially during personal care, distress, communication difficulties or changing needs.

Policies can set expectations, but caring practice must be visible in relationships, language, choices, privacy and the way staff respond in the moment. Workforce wellbeing also matters because supported staff are better able to deliver person-centred care.

Understand the current Caring quality statements

CQC's published framework groups Caring under five quality statements. Evidence may include people's experiences, feedback from staff and leaders, observation and provider processes.

• Kindness, compassion and dignity.
• Treating people as individuals.
• Independence, choice and control.
• Responding to people's immediate needs.
• Workforce wellbeing and enablement.

Protect dignity, privacy and confidentiality

• Ask how each person wishes to be addressed and supported.
• Knock, explain and seek permission before entering private space or beginning care.
• Protect the person's body, belongings, conversations and records from unnecessary exposure.
• Use respectful language about people in records, handovers and staff discussions.
• Provide communication support so people understand and can express themselves.
• Challenge discriminatory, dismissive or institutional behaviour immediately.

Deliver genuinely individual care

Person-centred information should influence daily decisions. A life history or preference recorded in a plan has little value if rotas, routines and staff practice ignore it.

• Record strengths, aspirations, relationships, routines, identity and cultural or spiritual needs.
• Offer meaningful choices in ways the person can understand.
• Adapt routines around the person rather than organisational convenience.
• Support important relationships and community connections.
• Review preferences because they may change over time.
• Check whether people feel known rather than merely processed through tasks.

Promote independence, choice and immediate response

• Encourage people to do what they can safely do for themselves.
• Provide equipment, time, information and encouragement that enable independence.
• Respect informed choices, including choices staff may not personally prefer.
• Recognise non-verbal signs of pain, anxiety, distress or discomfort.
• Respond promptly to requests and explain unavoidable delays honestly.
• Record and communicate the approaches that reassure each person.

Support staff to provide consistently caring support

1. 1Recruit for values as well as experience and complete proper checks.
2. 2Model compassionate behaviour from induction onwards.
3. 3Give staff sufficient time, information, supervision and emotional support.
4. 4Monitor workload, fatigue, bullying, discrimination and psychological safety.
5. 5Use observations and feedback to recognise good practice and address poor interactions.
6. 6Ask people whether changes have improved how care feels to receive.