Social media

Keep up with our work by following us on your favourite social media networks.

Our online communities

Our online communities give you an easy way to get involved with our work and share your ideas and opinions. We use them to bring together groups of people, collect your views, conduct surveys and run quick polls.

• More information about our public online community
• More information about our online community of providers and professionals

Email newsletters

Sign up for CQC newsletters to get the latest information from CQC delivered straight to your inbox.

House rules

Our social media/forums are not for reporting emergencies or safeguarding situations. Please phone 03000 61 61 61 or contact your local social services or the police if you believe someone is at imminent risk of harm.

Our social media channels and forums offer you a way to engage with us on a wide range of topics. They can be used to keep you up to date with our latest news and updates, get involved in our work and help us produce the right information to help you choose care. Experiences of care can be shared through our website.

It’s important that we ensure that these online channels and forums are safe, that our online community members feel respected, and that everyone feels comfortable in sharing their views and opinions. For these reasons, we’ve drawn up a short list of guidelines to ensure that everyone can make the most of these channels and forums.

The safety and wellbeing of our online communities are very important to us, and therefore we ask you to:

• Not post confidential or personal information. If we need further information, we may ask you to send this to us by private message or email.
• Not use offensive, indecent or obscene language that could be discriminatory or promotes discrimination of any kind.
• Not incite, condone or encourage conduct which could result in a criminal offence, civil liability, or otherwise breach any laws.
• Not post anything that could be considered defamatory, embarrassing, or damaging to an individual, company or entity’s reputation.
• Not disrupt our ability to support other community members
• Not use them for campaign purposes
• Stay on topic and avoid posting irrelevant comments
• Not to target, harass or intimidate CQC staff or community members

Posts of the above nature will be removed from our page.

Please recognise that these online communities may not be the best way for us to respond to questions you raise and we may ask you to use alternative ways of communicating with us (for example having direct dialogue with an inspector or inspection manager) where we think that will be the best way to answer your queries. Sometimes we are unable to answer questions, especially around inspections due to legal restrictions.

We want our online spaces to be positive communities. Much as any organisation online does, we reserve the option to hide your posts if they are in violation of our rules. If we believe your behaviour is becoming unreasonable we will explain why we believe your behaviour is unreasonable and give you the opportunity to change. Continuous or serious breaches may lead us to take a decision to block you from our page. If you’re unable to see our responses please email us on enquiries@cqc.org.uk and we’ll send you a copy. If you wish to challenge this please email us to discuss.

Management of our social media accounts and forums:

• Our accounts are managed by staff from 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday. While we may post outside of these hours, we are often not able to respond to posts or queries outside of these times.
• If you have concerns or queries outside of these hours, you can email enquiries@cqc.org.uk and we will get back to you as soon as possible.
• If you are ever concerned that someone is in imminent risk of harm, please contact the emergency services immediately.

Your content:

• We will curate content shared by you online and we may re-post it, in-line with the terms of service of our social media platforms and our privacy policies.
• Retweets, shares and follows on social media should not be considered endorsements.

For more information on our online channels and forums, or to give suggestions on how to improve our guidelines, contact social@cqc.org.uk