Families searching for care for an older loved one may be relying on official ratings they believe are current, despite some remaining unchanged for years, new research has warned.
An independent survey of 1,000 UK adults, commissioned by OpenScore, found that 67% believe care homes are inspected at least once a year, while 73% describe finding the right care home as an urgent task.
Rather than faulting the regulator itself, the research points to the lengthy intervals between CQC inspections, and to the contrast between families’ assumptions that ratings are current and the reality that many are years old.
Under CQC’s current single assessment framework, routine inspections of care homes rated Good or Outstanding take place on a three-to-five-year cycle, rather than the annual visits most families assume – a gap widened further by a well-documented assessment backlog(1).
For Katie Ballands, who was searching for permanent care for her 79-year-old mother, Valerie, who is living with Alzheimer’s, the inspection backlog was deeply personal.
Katie initially visited a care home rated as Good, only to find the reality was very different. She said she “wouldn’t leave my pet there, let alone my mum”. She later described the wider search as something she entered “quite blindly”, adding: “It’s hard to know what you’re meant to be looking for.”
Katie said she became wary of relying on static ratings and older reports, because “some of them might be from two years ago. Anything could have happened in two years.”
The gap is especially stark when compared with how people use everyday reviews. The same survey found that 65% of people would stop trusting an online review for a restaurant or hotel after six months, while one in three would not trust a review more than a month old.
Yet families choosing care can be left making decisions worth thousands of pounds a month using official ratings that may be several years old.
The research also found that 52% of UK adults would feel uncomfortable signing a care contract based on an official rating that is more than three years old, rising to 83% among 55 to 64-year-olds.
Asked about their biggest concerns if a care home had not been inspected in three years, 62% cited slipping hygiene and cleanliness standards, while 48% feared a serious safety incident could go undetected.
The findings form part of the Social Care Inspection Gap Report, which OpenScore will publish in full this autumn.
Debbie Harris, Founder of OpenScore and Autumna, said: “If we wouldn’t book a restaurant based on a three-year-old review, we shouldn’t be asking families to make a decision worth thousands a month on data that is just as old.
“Choosing a care home is one of the most significant financial and emotional commitments a family will ever make, yet too many people are doing it with information that belongs to a different chapter in a home’s history.
“People now expect current, reliable information in every other part of their lives. You can track a parcel to the minute, but families are too often being left in the dark when trying to choose care for someone they love. That is why this gap matters so much.”
OpenScore’s platform was created to help close the information gap between official inspections. It is not a replacement for CQC regulation but provides families with a more current view of daily care home standards.
The platform brings together more than 65 real-time indicators, including safety checks, dining quality, cleanliness, activities, family feedback and resident feedback, to show what a care home is really like today.
The survey also found that 89% of respondents consider real-time data transparency essential when choosing a care home for a relative.
Debbie and the OpenScore team are urging families choosing care to check the date of the last official inspection, look for recent family and resident feedback, ask how regularly quality information is updated and consider whether there have been recent changes in ownership, management or staffing.
Debbie added: “The official inspection system remains an important part of care quality, but families need to know what is happening between inspections too. A rating is a snapshot. Daily care is the full picture.”
For more information on OpenScore, visit www.openscore.org.uk.
