Absolute Care at Home · 25 Jun 2026 · GM-CQC-2026-ACH
Absolute Care at Home Ltd · domiciliary care · Trafford
Your care is rated Good — the gap is the evidence behind it
Your most recent CQC assessment rates the things people feel — effective, caring and responsive care — at Good, and at or above the national homecare average. The overall Requires improvement comes from two questions: Safe and Well-led — the governance and evidence layer. That is a narrower, more fixable gap than the headline rating suggests, and it is exactly the layer the new framework raises the bar on before your re-inspection.
The 30-second read
Position
Per your CQC assessment published 24 Feb 2025: overall Requires improvement — but Effective, Caring and Responsive are Good and above the homecare average. The shortfall is Safe (56%) and Well-led (61%).
What's changing
The framework your re-inspection sits under is being rewritten — the draft Adult Social Care framework, live end-2026 — and it puts more weight on governance, workforce and continuous evidence: the same areas behind your current rating.
The pattern
Your gap is concentrated, not broad: Safe is 13 points below the cohort, Well-led 9 points below, while your other three questions sit above it. The work is the evidence and governance spine.
The 30 minutes
What no dataset can see is the progress since your action plan. We map your evidence today against the new requirements, and you leave with your top-three readiness gaps for re-inspection.
Effective (75%), Caring (75%) and Responsive (75%) all sit above the national homecare average — the person-facing care is a genuine strength.
Safe gap
−13pp
Safe (56%) sits ~13 points below the cohort average (69%); Well-led (61%) ~9 points below. This is where the rating is won back.
Framework
end-2026
The new ASC framework lands around the window of an RI re-inspection — so the model to prepare against is the new one, not the old.
Your five questions vs the homecare cohort
n = 2,898 · England · framework-rated
Your score on each key question against the national domiciliary-care average. Bars show your score; the marker is the cohort average. Three of five are ahead — the gap is contained to Safe and Well-led.
Key question
You vs cohort average
You
Cohort
Delta
Safe
56%
69.2%
−13.2
Effective
75%
71.6%
+3.4
Caring
75%
74.0%
+1.0
Responsive
75%
72.3%
+2.7
Well-led
61%
69.8%
−8.8
Per CQC assessment AP8405, published 24 Feb 2025 · cohort = domiciliary homecare agencies rated under the single assessment framework (n = 2,898). Around 77% of the cohort is rated Good or better.
What's changing before your re-inspection
Draft ASC framework v9.1
Your next comprehensive assessment will sit under CQC's draft Adult Social Care framework (v9.1, March 2026) — live end-2026. Several of its shifts land directly on the two questions behind your current rating.
Show the six framework shifts
SHIFT 01
Outcomes over process
Evidence moves from “is there a policy” to “what difference it makes” — care plans and audits paired with documented outcomes.
SHIFT 02
Continuous, intelligence-led monitoring
Away from point-in-time visits — evidence has to stay continuously current, not assembled for an inspection.
SHIFT 03
Health inequalities & access in scope
Equity of access and outcomes for the people you support is newly weighted across the framework.
SHIFT 04
Workforce elevated within well-led
Recruitment, training, supervision and deployment move to the centre of the leadership judgement — directly relevant to your Well-led score.
SHIFT 05
KLOEs replace quality statements
Evidence needs re-mapping to a new structure — best done as you rebuild toward Good, not twice.
SHIFT 06
Pilot summer 2026, live end-2026
Implementation lands in the window an RI service is typically re-inspected — so prepare against the new model now.
Where the rating is won back
Safe & Well-led · from your assessment
Your latest assessment named specific, addressable areas under Safe and Well-led. None of them touch the care your people receive — they are about how consistently it is evidenced and governed.
Care plans & risk (incl. nutrition)Safe
Medicines administration & MAR auditSafe
Staff deployment & call consistencySafe
Recruitment checks & fit-and-properWell-led
Training & development recordsWell-led
Audits that close the loop into actionWell-led
Show what each involves
Safe · risk
Personalised risk & care plans
Care plans that capture and act on individual risk — nutrition and hydration included — and update as needs change, with the person's voice in the plan.
Safe · medicines
Medicines administration & audit
Consistent MAR completion and a monthly medicines audit that catches and resolves gaps before an inspector does.
Safe · staffing
Staff deployment & visit consistency
Rotas and travel time that let calls run to plan, with missed-visit analysis evidenced — so people get effective, consistent support.
Well-led · governance
Audits that drive improvement
Robust, scheduled audits that surface learning and track each issue through to resolution — the single biggest Well-led signal.
What this analysis can't see
The reason for the conversation
This is drawn from your latest published assessment and the national cohort — a point in time. What it cannot show is the progress you have made since: the action plan you submitted, the audits and care-plan work already underway, and where your evidence stands today against the new framework's requirements. That is the work of the thirty minutes — we map your current evidence to the draft KLOEs with you, focused on Safe and Well-led, so you walk into a re-inspection knowing your top-three remaining gaps rather than discovering them on the day.
What we'd work through together
6 items · the agenda for the call
Not a to-do list to tackle alone — the agenda we'd work through with you, drawn from your assessment and the draft framework. The first three are time-sensitive ahead of re-inspection; the rest compound.
01
Evidence the Safe improvements — risk, medicines, staffing
NowPre-re-inspection
02
Stand up closed-loop governance & audit on Well-led
NowPre-re-inspection
03
Make evidence continuously current, not visit-driven
HighOngoing
04
Re-map evidence to the new KLOE structure
HighQ3 2026
05
Protect and evidence your three strong questions
MediumQ3–Q4 2026
06
Pair care with documented outcomes
MediumQ4 2026
Show what each item involves on the call
Pull together the evidence that your risk, nutrition, medicines and staffing improvements have landed — the Safe areas the assessment flagged — in a form a re-inspection can read quickly.
Put audits on a schedule that surfaces learning and tracks every issue to resolution, with clear management oversight — the core of the Well-led judgement.
Move from “assemble before the visit” to continuously current evidence — the framework's biggest operational shift.
Re-tag your policies, care plans and audits to the new KLOEs once, as you rebuild toward Good.
Make sure Effective, Caring and Responsive — already above cohort — stay evidenced cleanly so they hold under the new model.
For each policy, document the outcome it produces for the people you support — the framework's outcomes-over-process shift.
We'd cover each of these against your live evidence on the call — not hand them over as homework.
Be inspection-ready before the inspector
GreenM are healthcare data and AI specialists. We connect the fragmented evidence behind a service — care plans, medicines, audits, staffing, people's voice — so it reads cleanly against the new KLOEs, not assembled the week before a visit. Your care is already rated Good where it counts most for people; the work is the Safe and Well-led evidence, and the window before re-inspection is the time to do it. In thirty minutes you'll leave with your top-three readiness gaps, surfaced live against the draft framework, and the first action on each.
