Aim of the Course

This course aims to help adult social care workers understand how they can contribute to practical, evidence-informed and person-centred quality improvement.

It develops the knowledge required to:

1. Recognise opportunities for improvement
2. Understand quality from the individual’s perspective
3. Use feedback, incidents, complaints and service information appropriately
4. Identify underlying causes rather than assigning blame
5. Establish clear and measurable improvement aims
6. Participate in small tests of change
7. Measure whether a change produces improvement
8. Report unintended consequences or emerging risks
9. Involve people receiving care and frontline staff
10. Support continuous learning and sustainable improvement

Scope of the Course

This course is suitable for care assistants, healthcare assistants, support workers, senior carers, team leaders, care coordinators, deputy managers, aspiring managers and other adult social care staff in England.

It provides role-appropriate awareness and practical improvement knowledge. It does not independently qualify learners to:

1. Lead complex organisational improvement programmes
2. Change approved care procedures without authorisation
3. disregard legislation, regulatory requirements or professional guidance
4. Collect or disclose personal information without a lawful purpose
5. Conduct specialist investigations or statistical analysis without appropriate competence
6. Introduce changes that place people at avoidable risk

Learners must follow organisational governance arrangements, approved improvement plans, information-governance requirements and their level of authority.

What This Course Covers

The course covers:

1. Quality in adult social care
2. Quality assurance, governance and improvement
3. Legal and regulatory expectations
4. Person-centred measures of quality
5. Identifying improvement opportunities
6. Listening to people receiving care
7. Learning from complaints, incidents and safeguarding concerns
8. Understanding systems and underlying causes
9. Setting measurable improvement aims
10. Baseline information and measurement
11. The Model for Improvement
12. Plan–Do–Study–Act cycles
13. Team participation and communication
14. Managing risks and unintended consequences
15. Implementing and sustaining successful changes
16. Sharing learning and promoting an improvement culture

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course, learners should be able to:

1. Define quality improvement in adult social care.
2. Explain why quality improvement must focus on people’s experiences and outcomes.
3. Distinguish quality improvement from quality assurance and routine compliance monitoring.
4. Explain the relationship between governance and improvement.
5. Describe the quality-monitoring requirements associated with Regulation 17.
6. Identify information that may reveal an improvement opportunity.
7. Recognise patterns across complaints, incidents, audits and feedback.
8. Explain why repeated problems require examination of underlying systems.
9. Avoid attributing a problem to an individual without sufficient evidence.
10. Involve people receiving care in identifying and evaluating improvements.
11. Explain why frontline staff should participate in improvement work.
12. Describe the current process before proposing a solution.
13. Use simple methods to explore causes and contributing factors.
14. Develop a clear and measurable improvement aim.
15. Explain the purpose of baseline information.
16. Distinguish process, outcome and balancing measures.
17. Describe the three questions within the Model for Improvement.
18. Explain the four stages of a PDSA cycle.
19. Participate appropriately in a small test of change.
20. Use evidence to decide whether a change should be adapted, adopted or abandoned.
21. Recognise potential risks and unintended consequences.
22. Escalate immediately when an improvement activity creates a safety concern.
23. Work within personal competence and organisational authority.
24. Explain how successful improvements can be implemented and sustained.
25. Contribute to a workplace culture of learning and continuous improvement.

Further Reading and References

1. Regulatory requirement: CQC’s guidance on Regulation 17 explains providers’ responsibilities for governance, auditing, monitoring quality and taking action to improve services. Read CQC Regulation 17 guidance
2. Adult social care framework: Skills for Care’s Quality Matters resource supports a shared understanding of high-quality, person-centred adult social care and the measurement of improvement. Explore Skills for Care Quality Matters
3. Evidence-based improvement: NICE provides a dedicated quality-improvement resource to help adult social care providers improve services and outcomes. View the NICE adult social care improvement resource
4. Practical methodology: NICE’s implementation guide explains how evidence, baseline assessment, action planning and measurement can support service improvement. Read NICE’s practical improvement guide

Important practice point: A change is not automatically an improvement. It must produce measurable benefits without causing disproportionate risks, poorer outcomes elsewhere or additional burdens that outweigh its value.