Assessing quality and performance

When we assess services using our new approach, we will need to apply scores for each quality statement to decide the ratings. This page explains how we will do this.

Services with an existing rating or findings about compliance

When we carry out our first assessment of your service using the assessment framework, we will select which quality statements to look at. The selection of quality statements will be determined by national priorities, set by the type of service, as well as a consideration of the information we hold about your service.

For each of the quality statements selected, we will collect evidence and give a score to that quality statement. This means the scores for those quality statements will be based entirely on our new assessment.

For the remaining quality statements, the scores will be based on the current, published ratings for the relevant key question. These scores will be:

• 4 for each quality statement where the key question is rated as outstanding
• 3 for each quality statement where the key question is rated as good
• 2 for each quality statement where the key question is rated as requires improvement
• 1 for each quality statement where the key question is rated as inadequate

There are 4 exceptions to this approach where specific topics have moved from one key question to another or are new to our assessment framework.

For all services these exceptions are as follows:

• The initial scores for the 'workforce wellbeing and enablement' quality statement will be based on the rating for the well-led question. This is because this topic area has moved from the well-led key question to the caring key question in our new framework.
• We will not apply an initial score for the ‘environmental sustainability - sustainable development’ quality statement. This is because it is a new area in our framework and there are no previous ratings.

For adult social care services previously inspected using the adult social care framework only:

• The initial scores for the 'care provision, integration and continuity' quality statement will be based on the rating for the well-led key question.
• The initial scores for the 'providing information' quality statement will be based on the rating for the effective key question. This is because this topic area has moved from the effective key question to the responsive key question in our new framework.

Services that have not yet been inspected

If your service has not previously been inspected when we assess using our new approach, we will not apply initial scores as there are no previous findings to base these on.

For these services, we will normally collect evidence for all the quality statements within the first year.

Services we do not rate

For some types of service, we do not have the legal ability to give a rating.

We will assess these services using the new framework. However, unlike services we rate, there is no overall score or scoring for key questions or quality statements, and no overall rating. Read our guidance for non-rated services.