Ratings for care home and domiciliary support services – our action plan

At the end of July, the Welsh Government will launch a consultation on draft regulations which will require ratings for care home and domiciliary support services to be published from 1 April 2025. 

In preparation for the publication of ratings and in response to an independent evaluation of the silent ratings pilot, we have developed an action plan which outlines the steps we will take over the coming weeks and months. 

You can view our ratings action plan by clicking on the link at the bottom of this page.

Our response so far

The last month has been a busy one for the adult and children’s services team at CIW as we have been focussing on the recommendations outlined in our recent independent evaluation of silent ratings and how we can take these forward. We have also facilitated three provider events to share the findings of the evaluation and how we are going to respond. 

Since the evaluation report was published in June 2024, we have carefully considered the following recommendations:

Recommendation 5: The change programme should include a review of the four existing themes which are subject to ratings (well-being, care and support, leadership and management, and environment). This should look specifically at the function of the well-being theme and consider severing its link with the other three themes in terms of ratings levels. 

Our response:

We have listened to your feedback, and we have decided we will sever the direct link between the well-being theme and the other three themes (care and support, leadership and management and environment). We will now focus our efforts on how we can evaluate the well-being of those receiving services. 

Recommendation 6: A review of the current ratings levels and descriptors should be undertaken, to give a more effective indication of a provider’s performance against each theme and, in particular, providing a more nuanced position for those currently rated as ‘Good’.

Our response:

We agree that the ratings descriptors need to be reviewed. We will be working directly with the sector (via our newly established stakeholder task group) to review all our descriptors. 

The evaluation report also provided some ratings framework options for us to consider including:

• Introducing an additional rating, or ratings, for example including ‘very good’ 
• Reviewing the current descriptor for the ‘Excellent’ rating. 
• Developing a simple visual axis containing the ratings levels and enabling the precise position of a service to be clearly displayed. 
• Adopting a star rating like that used in the Food Hygiene Standards, to show clearly the current position of a service

In order to maintain consistency, we have decided to continue with the four ratings that were introduced in June 2023. However, we will develop a visual representation of the four ratings along with a revised ratings framework and accompanying guidance. 

What next?

There is a lot of work to be done between now and April 2025 and we will be working closely with providers and other stakeholders to help us develop:

• Revised rating descriptors
• Guidance for inspectors and providers
• How we display ratings 

We started this work in early July at our online provider events where we welcomed feedback from over 240 providers. You can see the PowerPoint slides from these events here.

We are also setting up a ratings task group consisting of care providers, inspectors and commissioners to work with us as we take this work forward

And finally, we would encourage anyone with an interest in ratings to respond to the Welsh Government legislative consultation later this month.