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How staff, teams and services work together

Effective care is often reliant on how different services and experts work together across the health and social care sector. Regulated adult social care providers are responsible for ensuring they engage with healthcare and are working collaboratively to support the health and wellbeing of people.

From major events such as hospital admissions or moving between care services, establishing and maintaining effective working relationships with other organisations and professionals is something the CQC expects of all care services.

The following film provides a summary of this area of inspection. It can help you and your teams learn about what will be inspected and what is important to demonstrate to deliver good or outstanding care.

Introducing How staff, teams and services work together

Duration 02 min 10 sec

Ensuring that there is effective coordination between services is an essential part of most people’s care and support.

Whether responding to hospital admissions and discharges, or simply working with another local care service which the person also uses, this is something you need to be able to manage well.

Effective care, support and treatment is often reliant on people needing the support of not only your service but other organisations and professionals in health and social care.

During their inspections, the CQC will often want to speak with the people you support, their friends, carers and relatives. Inspectors will ask about communications and how well the staff understand their needs of using wider health or social care services.

The CQC’s interviews with staff, volunteers and managers will often look at how changing needs are assessed and acted upon quickly, as well as discussing referral processes.

In addition to the interviews, CQC inspectors may ask to review various documents including:

  • Referrals to and from other services.
  • Communications with commissioners and others about changing needs.
  • … and Complaints and compliments

Outstanding services will often ensure the planning and coordination of moving between services is done at the earliest possible opportunity. The decisions that are made fully reflect the care needs of the individual and their preferences.

Outstanding services are also well connected with other local organisations to ensure staff teams work effectively together to achieve joined-up care and support.

In contrast, services falling below the standard are not always consistent in how they manage this. Where people use more than one care service, they are often not always clear who provides what support.

To help you understand what you need to meet CQC standards, please refer to the recommendations, examples, and resources in GO Online.

CQC Focus

The CQC inspection will focus on the following key line of enquiry when looking at this topic. The additional prompt questions below may be explored as part of their inspection focus.

  • E4 -

    How well do staff, teams and services within and across organisations work together to deliver effective care, support and treatment?

  • E4.1 -

    How do staff work together to ensure that people receive consistent, timely, coordinated, person-centred care and support when they are referred to, use, leave, or move between, different services?


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