Community Care law update

Health and Social Care Bill

The Health and Social Care Bill will, if enacted, establish a new regime for the maintenance of care standards in England. The enforcement powers of the new care standards regulator, the Care Quality Commission, are largely spelt out on the face of the Bill. So far as regulatory requirements (the way sectors are expected to operate) are concerned, however, the Bill is merely a framework. The important detail is to be added by regulations made under the Bill.

The Department of Health recently began consultation on its proposals for a new set of social and health care regulatory requirements. It seems that, under the proposals, we would have a system that differs markedly from current arrangements. At present, there is a separate set of regulations for each registerable sector, which are supplemented by National Minimum Standards. Under the department’s proposals, however, there will be a single set of “generic” regulations applicable to all registerable sectors. Sector specific regulatory considerations will be addressed by the Care Quality Commission’s “methodology and criteria for assessing compliance”. In other words, the regulations will confer general obligations in relation to (for example) service user welfare and the Commission’s criteria will set out how a particular category of care provider can demonstrate compliance with those obligations.

The consultation paper is available at www.dh.gov.uk/en/consultations.