Keeping up with regulatory and sector developments is essential for care providers. This week's update focuses on learning from CQC inspections, preparing for seasonal respiratory viruses, and understanding the latest evidence on the adult social care workforce. This Week at a Glance Organisation Update CQC Woodland House in Bedfordshire has been downgraded from Outstanding to Inadequate following an inspection, with the service placed in special measures. UKHSA The latest su

Infection prevention and control in adult social care is not a side issue for CQC inspectors: it sits at the centre of how they judge whether a service is safe. Norovirus, flu, and drug-resistant organisms remain a routine feature of care delivery, and how consistently a service applies basic precautions shapes both resident wellbeing and the rating on the front of the inspection report. This guide sets out the essentials every registered manager needs in place. Why infection

Every home care manager has had the moment. An inspector, a commissioner or an internal audit asks for the training record of a carer who did a visit last Tuesday, and the certificate turns out to have expired the week before. Nobody meant for it to happen. The carer was competent, the training was booked, the renewal was sitting in somebody's inbox. But the record now says the visit was done by someone whose moving-and-handling or medication competence had lapsed, and that i

CareLearner is exhibiting at Care Show Birmingham 2026 on stand L60, Hall 3, NEC Birmingham, on 7 and 8 October. Our integration partner 20X joins us on the stand. Drop by for a live demo of closed-loop governance, a CQC readiness conversation, or simply to say hello. Glimpses from last year Key details • Event: Care Show Birmingham 2026 • Stand: L60 • Venue: Hall 3, National Exhibition Centre (NEC), Birmingham B40 1NT • Wednesday 7 October: 10:00

There is no single official mandatory training matrix for care workers. What Regulation 18 actually requires is "suitably qualified, competent, skilled and experienced" staff, plus training that's appropriate to each person's role, and the only training CQC names by law is learning disability and autism awareness. Everything else, you have to build yourself, mapped to your service's own risks. Contents Why there's no single "mandatory training list" No regulation, and no CQC

Ask any registered manager what "mandatory training" means and you will get a list: moving and handling, safeguarding adults, medication, basic life support, infection prevention and control, fire safety, and the rest of the Skills for Care core and mandatory set. Ask what keeps them awake before an inspection and the answer is different. It is not whether the courses were done. It is whether every certificate is still in date, for every member of staff, today. That gap is wo

A care home can have every MAR chart signed, every stock count correct, and every fridge temperature logged, and still be managing medicines unsafely. A medication audit that only checks whether boxes are filled in confirms that staff can complete a form. It doesn't confirm that a PRN dose was clinically justified, that a covert administration decision is still valid, or that a psychotropic medicine is still needed. Genuine medication audits have to check the decision behind

A service can be trading comfortably and still fail this part of well-led. Not because the numbers are bad, but because nobody can produce evidence that anyone has been checking them on purpose. The gap between being viable and proving it is what this piece is about. Why this matters CQC published four draft sector-specific assessment frameworks on 24 March 2026. The adult social care draft replaces the 34 cross-sector quality statements with 24 sector-specific key lines of e

Practical guidance for home-care providers in Great Britain 1. Purpose and scope This guideline explains how the organisation should schedule, record and pay travel, waiting time and breaks for workers delivering domiciliary care at different locations. It is designed for managers, rostering teams, HR and payroll. It assumes the worker is an employee or worker in Great Britain (England, Scotland or Wales). Northern Ireland has separate working-time legislation. Employment con