It’s widely recognised that the social sector continues to face challenges around funding, demand and staff retention. But all the while, providers work tirelessly to continue meeting compliance regulations.
As a social care provider, you know that compliance, while absolutely necessary, can often be time-consuming and costly. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) for example, can enforce a penalty of £4,000 to the provider and £2,000 to the Registered Manager for failure to comply with quality and safety regulations.
In this article, we’re exploring the vital role risk management plays in regulatory compliance as well as how you can efficiently manage your organisation's risks in 5 steps.
The Role Risk Management Plays in Regulatory Compliance
Being proactive about managing your risks helps to tackle issues before they become a problem, protecting your service and your clients from potential harm.
And it may well be the case that evidencing your risk management could be a key component for ensuring your service remains compliant, lending itself to a part of your overall inspection rating.
According to The King’s Fund latest Social Care 360 report, the quality ratings for services in April 2023 were:
- Outstanding = 4%
- Good = 79%
- Requires Improvement = 15%
- Inadequate = 1%
But it doesn’t end there. Managing your risks effectively and efficiently can also mean you’re in a better position to provide high-quality care to your clients which, coupled with a positive inspection rating, can protect your organisation’s reputation.
5 Steps For Managing and Evidencing Your Organisation’s Risks
So, what can care providers do to efficiently manage their risks between inspections? We’ve put together some strategies that you may find beneficial:
1. Identify the Risks
The first step you need to take to manage your risks is to identify them. In a social care setting, the types of risks you can face include financial, compliance, wellbeing or safeguarding risks just to name a few.
When identifying risks, you may want to consider any updated regulatory guidance that you need to comply with because as we have already mentioned, your regulatory body can impose fines or penalties for non-compliance.
It may also be worth notifying the relevant teams or stakeholders who are likely going to be part of the risk management process. Being proactive and transparent when identifying your organisation’s risks can help you demonstrate your commitment to continuous improvement and providing high quality, compliant care.
2. Assess the Impact
Once you have identified the sorts of risks that could pose a threat to your organisation, your staff or your clients, you want to assess the possible impact they could have.
- Are the risks relevant in multiple sites or unique to a single location?
- What is the likelihood of the risk occurring?
- How significant would the impact be if that risk were to happen?
A risk management solution can then score each risk for you depending on the likelihood and impact of the risks so you can easily see exactly what you’re working with and where you need to focus first.
3. Create a Plan
Now you know what your potential risks are and the possible impact they could have if no actions were taken, you can go about making a plan to protect your organisation from the risk.
Start by thinking about what needs to happen, who will be responsible for the tasks, what the planned outcomes will be, and the time scales you expect these actions to be completed.
A benefit of using risk management software is that you can create and describe the risk and assign the actions to your chosen task owners, all whilst giving each member of the team complete access to the necessary time scales and documents.
4. Implement the Plan
Once you have your plan of action, you can go about setting it in place. Risk management software, once you have allocated risk owners to their tasks, can notify them when things like reviews and actions are due or overdue, keeping them accountable and your risk management on track.
Plus, user-friendly solutions make sure to guide your users through a standardised path so all those directly involved with managing the task can be assured that the process remains efficient and consistent.
But of course, executing the plan is the responsibility of everyone in your service, not just the owners of the task. Ensure you’re empowering your staff and nurturing a culture of compliance by giving them the tools and training they need to provide the high quality, compliant care your organisation works hard to deliver.
5. Monitor and Report
With the plan underway and tasks being completed, you will now want to monitor the progress being made and the results of the hard work. In this time, you may also want to consider getting feedback from the people involved, to see how the process has been, where the challenges were and what can be learned.
Using a risk management solution, you can then compile the progress and outcomes of your risk management in tailored reports, providing these to wider stakeholders, board members or for evidencing during an inspection.
And having your risk management process in one place helps to ensure you can identify and mitigate risks, keep up to date with actions and provide evidence using a single source of truth.
Our Risk Management software allows you to identify, map and manage risks across your entire organisation, giving you complete oversight of how you work towards remaining compliant between inspections.
If you would like to see more from us, you can register to our on-demand webinar all about risk management in social care here: Transform your risk management in 2024
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