This morning the Care Quality Commission (CQC) released its report on the London Borough of Ealing’s Adult social care services. In this report Ealing is rated as ‘requires improvement.’ Ealing was one of the first local authorities to be assessed under this new CQC process.
Cllr Polly Knewstub, Cabinet Member for healthy equal lives said:
“We are very proud of the work our adult social care staff do every day and the passion they have in supporting the communities we serve in Ealing. We are incredibly disappointed by the outcome of this new inspection process and do not believe it reflects the quality of our services, or the experience of the residents that use them.
“While we know our strengths, we are also really ambitious and driven to continually make our services better; to find new ways to connect communities and give people in Ealing more choice and control over how they meet their social care needs.
“Ealing Council has a strong track record of opening our doors to external partners inviting them to provide challenge and help us improve how we support local communities but sadly this CQC report provides limited feedback about specific changes to our services or the way we work. In contrast, our recent Local Government Association (LGA) Corporate Peer Review in January 2023 led to really useful opportunities for learning. We completed a review of progress with the LGA who stated: “You have achieved outstanding progress over the past 22 months, successfully meeting each of the recommendations from the peer challenge.”
“The inspectors identified a range of strengths including our effective partnership arrangements, safeguarding of vulnerable people, our person-centred approach considering their individual and cultural needs, our support for carers and our ambition to reduce inequality. I was really pleased to see that they recognised social care staff who are proud to care for the people of Ealing, they are committed, knowledgeable and that there is a positive culture of learning and innovation; something I see every day from our brilliant adult social care teams.
“While this rating is disappointing, we have every confidence that our plans and our approach, working with our communities, will continue to build quality adult social care services that make a real difference to the lives of our residents.”