Care Quality Commission: The state of health care and adult social care in England 2018/19

Summary

State of Care is the Care Quality Commission (CQC) annual assessment of health care and social care in England.

The report looks at the trends, shares examples of good and outstanding care, and highlights where care needs to improve.

Content

Key findings:

• Most of the care that we see across England is good quality and, overall, the quality is improving slightly.
• But people do not always have good experiences of care and they have told the CQC about the difficulties they face in trying to get care and support. Sometimes people don’t get the care they need until it’s too late and things have seriously worsened for them.
• This struggle to access care can affect anyone.
• Too many people find it hard to even get appointments, but the lack of access is especially worrying when it affects people who are less able to speak up for themselves – such as children and young people with mental health problems or people with a learning disability.
• Too often, people must chase around different care services even to access basic support. In the worst cases, people end up in crisis or with the wrong kind of care.