Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether Care Quality Commission inspections of supported housing assess the extent to which providers (a) engage with wider communities living near supported housing, (b) encourage residents of supported housing to help their local community and (c) prevent drug use and alcohol abuse by supported housing residents.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has provided the following response:

There is a legal requirement that providers must support ‘the autonomy, independence and involvement in the community of the service user.’ Engagement with local communities is an important topic that is assessed regardless of the kind of adult social care service the CQC inspects. The criteria the CQC uses when rating services places a strong emphasis on appropriate community engagement.

When a person uses a service regulated by the CQC it is required, together with the person, to assess their strengths and needs, and to agree how the person will be supported and receive care. The CQC checks a sample of plans and experiences. Where a person’s needs and wishes included engagement with local volunteering opportunities we would expect providers to take steps to support this. However, this would only be relevant where a service provides housing related support or wider social care as well as the ‘personal care’ that is regulated by the CQC. Not all services provide wider social care or support.

Regulated providers are required to assess people’s strengths and needs, and to ensure that these needs are met, or that appropriate agreed referrals to outside agencies are made, for example, to specialist drug and alcohol teams. Where a service cannot meet a person’s needs they are expected to liaise with health and social services professionals to discuss this. The CQC checks this during inspections.