The Care Commission Forum is open to anyone with an interest in care services in Scotland, and has been set up to provide a medium through which the Care Commission can consult with users and providers and provide them with feedback and information. The Commission has a statutory obligation to hold a minimum of two Forum meetings a year.
Ms Hartnoll told delegates at the consultation meeting at Edinburgh's Murrayfield Stadium, 'This is the bare bones. We need to ensure a continuing dialogue as the role of the Commission expands and we need to find out how the Forum can be an effective listening ear to help us improve care services.
'A variety of means needs to be explored - whether through regional forums, letters or the internet.'
The Care Commission's director of operations, David Wiseman, told the meeting that one of the Commission's first tasks had been to clear a 'backlog' of registration applications, 'particularly in relation to applications from providers in the early years and childminding' that it had inherited from local authorities.
The Care Commission is responsible for regulating child residential and adult care services as well as early years, and has so far used one generic registration application form for all services. Mr Wiseman said this form asked for a 'massive amount of detail and might have put potential providers off applying'. The procedure is now going to be simplified, as the form is to be replaced by a 'single application form for a single service'. Mr Wiseman added, 'That is good news for us. We did have a feeling that we were being driven by IT needs rather than by service needs.'
He said consistency in achieving national standards did not mean the same as uniformity. 'You would have difficulty teasing out demands for uniformity in areas as diverse as Edinburgh and Orkney.' He said that there was a working group on consistency of practice 'which is helping us make decisions and provide guidelines, for example, on service provision and training.'
The timing and form of inspections was also being discussed, Mr Wiseman said. Organisations providing 24-hour care had to be inspected twice in 12 months. Both these inspections could, by law, be unannounced, but this was 'not necessarily an ideal way of doing things'. It was also important to ensure that inspection teams were 'appropriate in size so they are not instrusive,' and that team members had the necessary specialist skills or at least access to skills they required.
For copies of an information pack about the Care Commission Forum open meetings, see www.carecommision.comor phone 0845 6030890.