We are developing care surveys that reflect the Health and Social Care Standards
Scotland’s Health and Social Care Standards are rights-based and written from the perspectives of people experiencing care. Since they came into use in April 2018, we have been changing how we inspect so our work closely aligns with and supports the standards.
We want to include the views of people who experience care, as well as their relatives, friends and carers in our scrutiny and improvement work and these surveys help us do that. Over time, we will develop new care surveys for all service types which will include online surveys. These new surveys will replace the old care standards questionnaires.
So far, we have developed new care surveys for care homes for older people, that link to the new quality framework for inspecting care homes for older people.
These new care surveys have a stronger emphasis on hearing about people’s experiences and outcomes.
The surveys are designed around the key questions in the new quality framework.
- How well do we support people’s wellbeing?
- How good is our leadership?
- How good is our staff team?
- How good is our setting?
- How well is our care and support planned?
We hope the survey will enable more people to tell us about their care.
We offer two surveys: one for residents and one for relatives, friends and carers. The survey for residents includes a series of sentiments, shown in words and pictures that people can select. This may be all that some people can fill out but will still contain valuable information for the inspector.
Care survey – relatives/carers
We have produced a printable poster promoting the new care surveys for you to download and display in your service. You can download this here.
How services will receive the new care surveys
Care homes for older people will receive their care surveys in the same way that they used to receive the older style care standards questionnaires. They will also receive a set of sentiment and response cards together with guidance on using the cards and an inspection poster. If you have already received the older style care standards questionnaire, please continue to use them.
Sentiment and response cards
To support people to take part in inspections we have produced sets of sentiment and response cards. The images on the sentiment cards will mirror the first section of the survey and the response cards will help people to be clearer in their answers to the questions in the survey.
Guidance on supporting people with the survey (service version)
Testing online surveys
Up to now we have used paper questionnaires only. We have now developed online surveys which are being tested in a small number of services. As well as using the paper surveys, which all care homes for older people will receive, the sample services will be asked to pilot the online versions.
If you are in the test sample, we will write to you and let you know. Once the testing is complete, we will roll the online surveys out to all care homes for older people. We will tell services when this happens.