Managing quality assurance and continuous improvement in services

This short course will help managers produce effective responses and will demonstrate how to identify and implement service improvements.

Care home audits are part of the quality assurance and improvement cycle operated by all care providers. They involve a review of the efficiency and success of local and regulated safe systems of work and practice against the proven and agreed standards for high-quality care. If you want to better understand care home audits, their benefits and how to use them properly, we have put together this guide to help steer you in the right direction.  

This resource helps services understand and evidence the difference co-production is making in practice. It sets out key areas of impact and also explores co-production achievements (short-term outcomes), benefits, feedback and evaluation of the process. Clear definitions are provided to help services choose the most appropriate approach and gather meaningful information.

The resource was developed with the support of people with lived experience and those working in co-production.

This interactive guide provides a framework to support the investigation of medicines errors in adult social care settings. It helps services identify contributory factors, support learning, and take action to prevent similar incidents in the future.

This interactive course provides practical tools and techniques to support creative thinking and continuous improvement in the workplace. Based on Kaizen principles, it encourages participants to challenge assumptions, generate fresh ideas, and lead meaningful change. The course also introduces structured methods for analysing processes and identifying opportunities to work more efficiently.

Part of Skills for Care’s Good and Outstanding (GO) online toolkit, this resource supports adult social care providers to build a positive learning culture—one that actively identifies, investigates, and learns from safety incidents. Aligned with the CQC’s Single Assessment Framework and shaped by the experiences of high-performing services, it offers practical insights and real-world examples to help strengthen your approach.

Good and outstanding-rated services encourage and effectively resource the drive for improvement. From effective quality assurance practices to the ability to research and act upon innovation, these services are committed to providing the best care possible and can implement the changes needed.

This practical resource from Skills for Care is aimed at care providers looking to improve their CQC rating. It’s especially helpful for leaders and managers who want to embed continuous improvement across their service. The guide breaks things down into clear steps, with a focus on understanding what ‘good’ looks like and how to get there.

This interactive module helps managers conduct learning reviews to understand what can be learned from actions or experiences that didn’t go as planned. It explains the purpose of learning reviews, how to conduct them with individuals and teams, and how to integrate them into your work environment. The module encourages exploring different perspectives and creating action plans to avoid repeating incidents.

This quarterly review tool is designed to support nominated individuals in carrying out structured, evidence-based reviews.

Use it to guide your three-monthly checks on staffing, governance, support quality, and the experiences of the people you support. The tool helps you capture detailed notes, observe practice, and build a clear improvement plan, keeping your service compliant and inspection ready.

Quality assurance involves the monitoring and evaluation of the service to ensure that the quality is being met. The following recommendations are aimed to supporting services to deliver effective quality assurance and evidence care that meets regulatory expectations.

This resource helps shape high quality adult social care services and improve the wellbeing of adults using social care.

It brings together our quality standards and medicines guidelines in an easy to use format, mapped against the Care Quality Commission (CQC)’s 5 key questions. We designed the resource for  people involved in commissioning adult social care. But it could also be useful to provider organisations, and people who fund their own care.

This event gave participants the chance to explore people’s experiences and perspectives about what quality means in adult social care, both now in pandemic management and recovery planning, and what quality social care means in the future.

The SBT has been developed to help leaders and practitioners in local authorities, adult social care, and partner organisations, such as the NHS and voluntary, community, and social enterprise sectors, assess their ambitions, strengths, and areas for improvement. The tool is specifically designed to help develop a system-wide approach to strengths-based working and aligns with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) Quality Assurance Framework.

Grace Cares have developed a practical, easy-to-use guide to support care managers and providers on their journey towards more sustainable, environmentally responsible practice. The guide breaks sustainability down into manageable steps, with real examples from care settings and simple workbook exercises you can apply straight away. There are several versions available, including a free taster edition, so you can choose what works best for you.

This course will help you to think about how those involved in healthcare can monitor the progress of any initiative to improve care, and how they can make sure that any change is sustained.