Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he has taken to ensure the safety of residents in a) residential and b) nursing care homes.

Any form of abuse or neglect is unacceptable, and the safety of residents in residential and nursing care homes is of the utmost importance.

Statutory guidance under the Care Act 2014 makes clear that local authorities must ensure the adult social care services they commission are safe, effective and of high quality. A local authority must make enquiries when it has reasonable cause to suspect that an adult with care and support needs is experiencing, or is at risk of, abuse or neglect and is unable to protect themselves.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and social care in England. It registers, monitors and assesses services to make sure that they meet fundamental standards of quality and safety. The CQC has a range of enforcement powers that they can use where it finds that care services do not have suitable arrangements to keep people safe.

All registered providers have a duty to safeguard people using their service from abuse and improper treatment. As part of their assessments in care homes, the CQC checks whether services have effective systems, processes and practices to protect people from abuse and neglect.

In addition, the Health and Care Act 2022 introduced a new duty from April 2023 for the CQC to assess local authorities’ delivery of its adult social care duties under Part 1 of the Care Act as part of the Health and Care Act. These assessments also review how well local authorities meet their safeguarding responsibilities and ensure that there are effective systems and oversight of key safeguarding risks in the area.