The Local Government Association (LGA) has called for the scrapping of single-word ratings in assessments of adult social care services.
It comes after the Government announced it was ending the controversial ratings in Ofsted inspections, including for children’s social care teams and settings, with immediate effect.
The LGA said Care Quality Commission (CQC) assessment reports, which provide narrative summaries and analysis by themes, were sufficient and provided a balanced picture of the quality of services.
The association argued that single-word ratings did not do justice to the ‘complex and difficult state’ that adult social care was in after ‘a decade of underfunding’.
LGA community wellbeing board chairman David Fothergill said: ‘While assessment and regulation are both important and helpful in driving improvements to services, single-word or phrase judgements cannot ever adequately capture the complexity of adult social care and the work councils do to meet their legal obligations.’
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: ‘We are thoroughly reviewing the CQC and as part of that work we have asked the CQC to improve the transparency of their ratings.
‘We are not currently considering a change to the single-word ratings system.’
Health secretary Wes Streeting has said the CQC is ‘not fit for purpose’ and has promised to increase oversight of the regulator after an interim report uncovered low levels of physical inspections, a lack of consistency in assessments and problems with its IT system.
