Duty of Candour Policy

Aim

The aim of this policy is to ensure that Cavendish Homecare Professionals is fully compliant with the Duty of Candour and embraces a culture of openness and truthfulness in all of its dealings with clients, their carers and their families.

Background

This policy refers to the need for adult social care organisations to at all times be open, honest and transparent with their clients about their care and treatment.

This policy is written in response to the Francis Inquiry which made a number of recommendations about the standards that should be met by organisations that provide health and social care.

Cavendish Homecare Professionals understands that the Care Act 2014 places a duty on the Government to include a statutory duty of candour on providers registered with the CQC.

The “statutory duty of candour for health and adult social care providers” consultation document set out the proposals to impose the Duty of Candour on all providers where any harm to a client from their care or treatment is above a certain threshold. Where the harm threshold is breached providers will need to follow specific reporting requirements, such as notifying the client and including an apology, providing all information directly relevant to the incident, and providing reasonable support to the client.

What is the Duty of Candour?

The Duty of Candour requires social care providers to be open and transparent with clients about their care and treatment.

The Francis Inquiry proposed that providers should be under a statutory Duty of Candour to inform the client, or other duly authorised person as soon as practicable, when they believe or suspect that treatment or care provided has caused death or serious injury.

Implementation

Cavendish Homecare Professionals fully supports a culture of openness and transparency in all of its dealings with clients and their relatives or representatives. In this respect it welcomes the proposed Duty of Candour and embraces the philosophy behind the new duty.

The organisation believes that promoting a culture of openness and truthfulness is a prerequisite to providing safe, high quality care. The organisation has a well-developed framework for incident reporting which it expects all staff to comply with and always strives to provide the highest standards of care at all times. It believes that, in the event of these standards not being met, it should apologise sincerely to the clients concerned and provide a full explanation as to what went wrong and why.

In Cavendish Homecare Professionals:

• Managers and staff will be expected to develop and maintain an open, transparent, candid and honest working culture at all levels and at all times.
• The culture of honesty and transparency should include clients, their carers, relatives and representatives, and staff.
• Clients will be informed in a timely manner when particular incidents have occurred.
• Managers will provide a truthful account of the incident and an explanation about the enquiries and investigations that they will carry out.
• A sincere apology will be offered in writing wherever appropriate.
• Managers and staff will be expected to provide all reasonable support and assistance to those involved after any incident.
• All untoward incidents, errors and accidents must be reported as soon as they occur and appropriate records made and investigations conducted.
• A thorough and open investigation will be conducted into any incident, accident or mistake where a client suffers moderate or severe harm, or may have suffered such harm but for a near miss, with the organisation committed to reassuring clients, their families and carers that lessons will be learnt that will be used to help prevent such an event recurring.

Cavendish Homecare Professionals notes that:

• As well as the specific duty of candour which is focussed on a particular safety incident, the regulations also include a more general obligation on CQC registered persons to “act in an open and transparent way in relation to client care and treatment”.
• The regulation applies to the client themselves and, in certain situations, to people acting on their behalf, for example when something happens to a person who lacks the capacity to make decisions about their care.
• The new regulations on candour will be used by inspectors to confirm or encourage good practice through the ratings given to providers, rather than being enforced directly, however, if a provider fails to do any of the things above, CQC will be within its powers to move directly to prosecution without first serving a warning notice.
• The default position should be to be open, honest and candid, unless there are justifiable reasons for not being so – for example, because the client affected actively says that they do not want further information about the incident.

Date: January 2024

Version 8 (Review)

Source: Expert Care Manager