Guide
Your policies must describe how you really work: why sign-off matters
A policy pack can look perfect and still be wrong. The formatting is tidy, the headings are right, and every regulation is cited. But if it describes a service you don’t run, it isn’t your policy.
That is why, at OrCore, nothing is final until you have read every policy and signed it off as true to how you work. Here is why we think that matters, and what CQC and the law say about it.
A policy is a promise about your service
When you send policies to CQC, you aren’t sending general reading material. You are telling the regulator how your service will run: who does what, what happens when something goes wrong, how people are kept safe.
CQC’s Register as a provider page says you must complete the application yourself, and that CQC reviews your application, including your supporting documents, on the completeness and relevance of what you say. The same page says CQC cannot register you if you include incorrect information.
What CQC asks of every document
CQC’s page on what each document must include sets out a few basics. Each document carries your business name, the person responsible for it, and the dates it was created and will be reviewed. Each one has to be complete and relevant, and consistent with your other policies.
It also says that a third-party template has to suit your service type. A residential care template, in CQC’s own example, will not work for home care.
“Relevant” and “consistent” are the words to hold on to. A policy that names the wrong service type, the wrong local authority, or a role you don’t have is neither.
CQC wants to know you understand it
CQC publishes two real homecare applications, with the names changed.
In the one it refused, the company had bought policies online, but the applicant couldn’t say what was in them or how they applied to the agency. CQC listed not knowing enough about the policies, and how important they were, among its reasons.
In the one it registered, the applicant had also bought policies. The difference was that he had reviewed and adapted them, written others himself, and could explain in detail how they applied to the running of the service.
Both started with bought policies. Only one made them their own.
The statement of purpose has to be accurate too
Your statement of purpose is required by law. Regulation 12 of the Care Quality Commission (Registration) Regulations 2009 says the registered person gives CQC a statement of purpose with the information in Schedule 3, keeps it under review, and tells CQC about any revision within 28 days.
Your policies and your statement of purpose describe the same service. If one says you support adults over 65 in their own homes and another reads like a nursing home, that gap shows.
The law on false statements
There is a harder edge to this. Section 37 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 makes it an offence to knowingly make a statement in a registration application that is false or misleading in a material respect.
We’re not raising this to frighten anyone. Mistakes in a policy pack are often honest ones. But it is a reminder that what you send CQC is a statement of fact about your service, and it is worth reading before you sign.
Policies are for after registration as well
Registration is the start. Regulation 17 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 covers good governance, and requires systems and processes that are established and operated effectively. A policy that describes something nobody does is hard to operate.
Your staff will read these policies. So may the people you support and their families. If the words match what happens, they’re useful. If they don’t, they cause confusion at the worst moments.
What sign-off means at OrCore
Our interview asks about your business: your roles, your arrangements, how things actually happen. It never asks about the people you care for. Your answers fill our master policies, so each draft starts from your facts rather than a blank template.
Then the drafts come back to you. You read each one. You change anything that isn’t right. You sign it off only when it describes how you really work.
We won’t tell you how to run your service. If you ask whether a practice is the right one, our answer is “We can’t advise on this”, and for advice on your situation we’d point you to a qualified specialist of your choice. What we do is help you write down, accurately, what you already do.
We can’t guarantee registration. CQC makes every decision. But a pack you’ve read, understood and signed is one you can stand behind when you’re asked about it.
Start with your own answers
If you’d like policies that start from how you work, the interview is a plain screen with a blinking cursor, ready when you are. Start the interview here.