Forum Brief: Care standards

The body set up to register and inspect care homes and private clinics received nearly 13,000 complaints about services in its first year.

Publishing its annual report, the National Care Standards Commission, which was established in April 2002, also reveals it investigated 3,583 complaints about poor care.

Forum Response: National Care Standards Commission

Anne Parker, chair of the NCSC, said: "Our first year has been a year of tremendous achievement and challenge for the commission. I am delighted that we have gone so far in fulfilling our promise to be a force for good in the health and social care world.

"We have successfully established from scratch an organisation which has been able to deliver a country-wide regulation system working to new legislation.

"We have delivered this from new office bases and with untried information technology while bringing together staff from the 230 previous regulators to start to build a national team.

"The evidence from our inspections and the feedback we receive from service providers is helping us to deliver increasingly consistent regulation year on year. This evidence will also provide a wealth of information about the quality of services and the issues which face the sector.

"I am delighted we have been able to achieve so much in this first year. These achievements speak volumes for the commitment of our staff and senior managers and the real changes in the quality of people's lives that this work has already helped bring about."

Forum Response: General Social Care Council

Lynne Berry, chief executive of the GSCC, told ePolitix.com: "Regulation of the services provided in the social care sector is already making a major contribution to the quality of care provided to service users as the National Care Standards Commission's annual report shows.

"The General Social Care Council, as the workforce regulator for social care in England, works in partnership with the NCSC with the aim of continuing to raise standards of training, skill care in the workforce.

"The GSCC will continue to work with the commission's successor, the Commission for Social Care Inspection, to promote high standards across social care services through our codes of practice for care staff and their employers and through registration of the social care workforce."