CQC: The state of health care and adult social care in England 2023/24 (25 October 2024)

Summary

The '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

Areas of specific concern

The 2023/24 report highlights some areas of specific concern. The concerns involve issues around safety, quality, workforce, and inequalities, including:

• Too many women are still not receiving the high-quality maternity care they deserve. Of the 131 locations we inspected in our national maternity inspection programme, almost half were rated as either requires improvement (36%) or inadequate (12%).
• We have concerns that children and young people are not always able to access services in a timely way – both planned and in an emergency. Anecdotal evidence suggests that parents and carers are well placed to recognise when their child is very unwell, but many feel they are not being listened to.
• The number of health visitors, who give individual support for young children and their parents, has declined by 45% over the last 9 years.
• Only around a quarter of people with a learning disability were recorded on the learning disability register, which means that many people are missing out on the proactive care and treatment they are entitled to.
• Despite fewer new referrals for autism diagnoses over 2023/24, the average waiting time to start an assessment reached a peak of nearly a year (328 days) in April 2024, rather than the recommended 3 months.
• People in Black or Black British ethnic groups are over 3 and a half times more likely to be detained under the Mental Health Act than people in white ethnic groups.
• Work on our cross-sector dementia strategy is highlighting the compassionate care and initiatives that are improving people’s lives, but staff do not always understand the specific needs of people with dementia.