Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department plans to issue updated guidance to local authorities on minimum contact standards for adult social care front-door services, including call handling, voicemail and email triage; and whether local authorities will be required to publish performance metrics.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is assessing how well local authorities in England are meeting the full range of their duties under Part 1 of the Care Act 2014, including local authorities’ front doors. The assessments identify local authorities’ strengths and areas for improvement, facilitating the sharing of good practice and helping us to target support where it is most needed. Reports are made available on CQC’s website at the following link:

https://www.cqc.org.uk/care-services/local-authority-assessment-reports

Many local authorities are modernising their adult social care front door services, improving their websites and introducing digital self-service tools, integrating with health services and empowering residents to manage their care needs online, thereby reducing the time taken to access essential information and freeing up capacity to deliver timely assessment.

We are working with People with Lived Experience and the sector to test how the Government can support these efforts to improve people’s experience of navigating adult social care at the front door. Next, we will prototype national online information and advice to help people access basic information more easily and reduce avoidable demand on local authority front doors.