Planning and delivering integrated health and social care: guidance

9. Improves the quality of the service

People want to feel confident that they are accessing high quality care and support. Their experiences should be at the heart of assessing, monitoring and improving the quality of services.

People will know that care and support is of high quality, and that services are continually trying to improve, if they experience:

• Care and support that has a positive impact on their health and wellbeing and on their ability to achieve their desired outcomes
• Services that are designed with and around the people who use them
• Staff who communicate clearly and listen to their experiences, aspirations and preferences, working with them to support choice and decision making
• Staff who are compassionate, sensitive and respectful in every contact
• Staff who have time to provide care and support
• Environments that are clean, safe and accessible
• Care and support that is delivered at the time it’s needed and in the appropriate place
• Continuity in the staff involved in their care and support
• Staff who are supported to keep their learning and knowledge up-to-date and are committed to understanding best practice and reflecting on their actions
• Organisations that actively encourage feedback, listen to and act on comments, ideas and complaints appropriately, and
• Care and support that clearly demonstrates it lives up to national standards and guidelines

People should expect that organisations monitor and improve the quality of the care they plan and deliver effectively and that scrutiny bodies provide robust checks and balances to this, as well as ongoing support for improvements.

When people are accessing care and support they must be assured that the organisation delivering the service is enabled, through the commissioning process, to provide high quality care which is continually improving.