Quality Statements
Quality statements are the commitments CQC expects providers to meet, written from the perspective of the person using the service, and grouped under the five key questions of safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led.
Quality Statements in practice
They replaced the older Key Lines of Enquiry as the structure CQC assesses against, and they are phrased as “we” statements describing what good care looks like in practice.
The practical consequence is that evidence has to be about experience and outcomes, not just process. A policy proves you have a rule. A quality statement asks whether people actually experience the thing that rule was meant to deliver, which is why observation, conversations and records are weighted together.
Providers usually find it helps to map each policy and audit to the quality statements it supports, so gaps are visible before an assessment rather than during one.
Back to the glossaryRelated definitions
Regulation 17 (Good governance)
Regulation 17 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 requires providers to have systems that assess, monitor and improve the quality and safety of the service, and to keep accurate, complete records.
Read definitionProvider Information Return (PIR)
A Provider Information Return is a structured set of questions CQC sends to a registered provider asking for evidence about the quality of its service, and the answers feed directly into how the service is assessed.
Read definitionSingle Assessment Framework
The Single Assessment Framework is the structure CQC uses to assess every type of service, built on the same five key questions and quality statements regardless of whether the provider is a care home, a domiciliary agency or a clinic.
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