Almond Care Providers Ltd · Supported living & homecare · Croydon
A Good from March 2020 — now past the six-year mark CQC named as a re-assessment priority
Almond Care’s published position, read from the CQC register on 22 August 2026 — and the pattern across the 327 supported living services that held a Good under the previous framework and have since been re-rated under the one replacing it.
The 30-second read
Position
Rated Good overall and on all five key questions, published 13 March 2020 — 6.4 years ago, and the third consecutive Good at this registration. No report under the current framework has been published for Almond Care, so no statement scores exist.
What’s changing
The six shifts in the guide you downloaded are the rules the next assessment is written against. The sector-specific frameworks are in pilot until October and due to take effect at the end of 2026.
The pattern
Of the 327 supported living services that held a Good and have since been re-rated, 70 came out below it — and well-led fell below Good in 83 of them, more often than the overall rating did. The median service in that set was re-rated 6.1 years after its old one; Almond Care is at 6.4.
The 30 minutes
What the register cannot show is where Almond Care’s evidence sits today, across a registration that now covers supported living and homecare rather than the 15-person service the 2020 report describes. You leave with your first three priorities.
Since the report was published on 13 March 2020. CQC has named 6+ years in adult social care as a re-assessment priority band, and Almond Care is past it. Of 3,051 supported living services with a dated rating, 31.5% are in that band; 903 are older than yours.
Goods that did not hold
70 / 327
Supported living services that held a Good under the previous framework and came out below Good when re-rated under the current one. 248 held it; 9 rose to Outstanding.
Sector’s weakest statement
41.2%
Of 722 rated supported living services, the share scoring governance, management and sustainability below Good — weakest of the 33 scored statements. Cohort average 2.43 of 4.
The clock on that rating
CQC register · read 22 Aug 2026
21 FEBRUARY 2014
Registered with CQC at 63 Woodmere Avenue, Croydon — 12.5 years ago, under its own provider registration.
27 APRIL 2015
First inspection report published: Good overall and on all five key questions.
4 AUGUST 2017
Second report published: Good again, overall and on all five.
13 MARCH 2020
Current report published: Good overall and on all five key questions, with no breaches recorded and no enforcement action. It describes supported living for fifteen people, assessed against “the principles and values that underpin Registering the Right Support”.
6 JULY 2023
CQC reviewed the information it holds and, in the words carried on the register, “We have not found evidence that we need to reassess the rating at this stage.” The rating stood; no new report was published.
FEB 2024 – JUL 2026
722 supported living services took on a rating published under the Single Assessment Framework — 34 quality statements, each scored 1 to 4. Earliest report 6 February 2024, most recent 31 July 2026. Almond Care was not among them.
22 AUGUST 2026 · TODAY
The rating a commissioner, a local authority or a family reads today is still the March 2020 one, and it is 2,353 days old. The four sector frameworks replacing the SAF are in pilot until October, due to take effect at the end of 2026.
What’s changing under that rating
Draft ASC framework v9.1
The six shifts in the guide you downloaded are the rules this analysis is read against, so they are not re-taught here. Two of them decide what a 2020 Good is worth: judgements move from a calculated score to written descriptors, and evidence is read continuously from a provider’s own systems rather than assembled for a visit. Almond Care has no scored statements for the first of those to act on — which is the exposure rather than a reprieve, because it also means there is no current-framework evidence base on file to carry forward. The draft Adult Social Care framework covers supported living and domiciliary care in one document, so both halves of your registration are read against it.
01 Outcomes over process02 Continuous, intelligence-led monitoring03 Inequalities & resource efficiency in scope04 Workforce inside well-led05 Descriptor-led, not score-led06 34 statements → sector-specific KLOEs
Draft Adult Social Care Assessment Framework v9.1, March 2026 · consultation closed 12 June 2026 · pilots June–October 2026 · effect from end 2026. The descriptors are still in draft — illustrative outcome under the draft frameworks, not a prediction of a CQC decision.
Your five key questions, as published
Report published 13 Mar 2020
Key question
What the published report records
Rating
Safe
Safeguarding procedures understood by staff; recruitment checks completed before staff started; enough staff for people’s needs; risks assessed and reviewed regularly; medicines received as prescribed.
Good
Effective
Needs assessed before people started; staff trained relevant to those needs; people supported to cook for themselves and eat well; access to health professionals when needed.
Good
Caring
People treated in a caring and respectful manner; choice, control and independence promoted; support focused on gaining new skills.
Good
Responsive
People consulted about their care and participating in activities that met their needs; a complaints procedure people said they knew how to use.
Good
Well-led
Systems in place for monitoring quality; the registered manager and staff working in partnership with health and social care providers; staff reporting they felt supported by their managers.
Good
Ratings and report date as printed on the CQC register, verified live on 22 August 2026 · a pre-framework report, so no 1–4 statement scores and no key-question percentages exist for Almond Care · the 2020 report’s summary is not written key question by key question, so the notes above group its own findings against each
What the rating covers, and what the register now lists
Two published sources, six years apart
A rating covers what the inspection looked at. The 2020 report is explicit about its scope: “CQC does not regulate premises for supported living; this inspection looked at people’s care and support” — and, in the same summary, “At the time of the inspection fifteen people were using the service.”
What the 2020 report describes
A supported living service — “care and support to people living in a supported living setting so that they can live as independently as possible” — for fifteen people, with care and housing provided under separate contractual agreements.
What the register lists today, 22 August 2026
Two types of service — homecare agencies and supported living — one regulated activity, personal care, and three service specialisms: adults over 65, adults under 65, and learning disabilities. Local authority: Croydon.
Both are published fact, six years apart. Where the register is wider than the report, there is registered activity the published rating does not describe — and for a commissioner, a social worker or a family that one rating is the summary of everything Almond Care does.
What the current framework did to supported living Goods
327 services · re-rated · England
The closest measurable answer to the obvious question. Across England, 327 supported living services held a Good under the previous framework and have since had a rating published under the current one. These are their outcomes.
Held their Good (248)
75.8%
Rose to Outstanding (9)
2.8%
Requires improvement (60)
18.3%
Inadequate (10)
3.1%
70 of the 327 — roughly one in five — came out below Good. The number worth sitting with is the next one: among the same 327, well-led was rated below Good 83 times and safe 69 times. Well-led slipped in more services than the overall rating did, so a service can keep its headline and still lose the key question everything else is read through. The median gap between old rating and new was 6.12 years; Almond Care’s is 6.44, past the point at which most of this set was looked at again. Holding a Good is where all 327 started — it was never a position inside the outcome.
Across the 722 rated supported living services, these six statements are scored below Good most often. Nationally, among all services rated below Good, 98% are also below Good on well-led and 95% on safe — a rating rarely falls on the care itself. Governance is your sector’s weakest statement, and it is a well-led one.
Governance, management and sustainability2.43 · 41.2% below
Medicines optimisation2.62 · 31.9% below
Involving people to manage risks2.63 · 30.0% below
Safe and effective staffing2.65 · 29.1% below
Learning, improvement and innovation2.73 · 25.1% below
Consent to care and treatment2.73 · 22.9% below
Show what inspectors typically find behind each
Governance, management and sustainability (well-led · 2.43 · 41.2% below) — audit follow-through that stops at the finding, action tracking that cannot show a fix landed, evidence spread across systems that do not speak to each other.
Medicines optimisation (safe · 2.62 · 31.9% below) — gaps in medicines records kept in people’s own homes, missing as-required protocols, time-critical medicines not flagged as such.
Involving people to manage risks (safe · 2.63 · 30.0% below) — risk assessments left on a template, positive risk-taking absent, the person’s voice missing from the plan that manages their risk.
Safe and effective staffing (safe · 2.65 · 29.1% below) — supervision behind the provider’s own standard, induction gaps for new support workers, recruitment checks done but not evidenced.
Learning, improvement and innovation (well-led · 2.73 · 25.1% below) — no visible loop from incident to learning to a change in practice; training records that lag the rota rather than driving it.
Consent to care and treatment (effective · 2.73 · 22.9% below) — capacity assessments that are decision-general rather than decision-specific; best-interests decisions recorded as conclusions without the reasoning.
Cohort average and share below Good per statement, across the 722 supported living services in England rated under the Single Assessment Framework (n per statement 712–721); 33 of the 34 statements carry a score. The regional cut, stated because it is real: of 138 London supported living services rated under the current framework, 13 sit below Good — 9.4% against 21.9% nationally. The exposure here is the age of the evidence, not the postcode. These are the sector’s patterns behind a low score, not observations about Almond Care.
From the published record
3 strengths · 3 to watch
The strengths below are what the inspector recorded in 2020, in their words. That report records no breaches and no enforcement action — so the three watch items are about what the record covers and how old it is, not about the care it describes.
Strength
Good three times, eleven years apart
Reports published in 2015, 2017 and 2020 all rated Almond Care Good overall and Good on every one of the five key questions, at the same registration. That is a track record, not a single result.
Strength
Choice, control and least-restrictive practice
Inspectors recorded that “People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests”, with support focused on people gaining new skills and becoming more independent.
Strength
Safeguarding understood on the ground
The report notes “There were safeguarding procedures in place and staff had a clear understanding of these procedures”, alongside recruitment checks completed before staff started work and enough staff to meet people’s needs.
Watch
The evidence base is a 2020 snapshot
The report describes fifteen people using the service at the time. Whatever the service looks like now, the position on the register was formed on that — and it is the position now past CQC’s published six-year re-assessment priority band.
Watch
The register is wider than the report
The 2020 report is a supported living report. The register today also lists homecare agencies as a type of service at this location. The published rating does not describe that half of the registration.
Watch
The last CQC look was at the data
On 6 July 2023 CQC reviewed the information it holds and did not reassess. Between assessments its published approach is intelligence-led: statutory notifications, complaints and workforce returns are read continuously.
What this analysis cannot see
The reason for the conversation
Everything above is read from outside: your published reports, your registration record, and the pattern across 722 rated peers. What none of it can show is where Almond Care’s evidence sits today against the questions the next assessment will ask — support plans, capacity and consent records, medicines held in people’s own homes, supervision, incident learning and the systems they live in, as they stand this month rather than in early 2020. That is the work of the thirty minutes: we map your real evidence against the incoming questions with you, and you leave knowing your first three priorities instead of guessing at them.
What we’d work through together
6 items · the agenda for the call
Not a list to work through alone — the agenda for the call, drawn from your published record and the incoming framework. The first three are time-sensitive while the frameworks are in draft; the rest compound.
01
Which of the incoming key questions your current evidence can already answer, and which it cannot
NowQ3 2026
02
Where CQC-relevant evidence actually lives across your systems, and who owns each one
NowQ3 2026
03
Well-led on Almond Care’s terms — governance, the statement 41% of rated supported living peers score below Good
HighQ3 2026
04
What a March-2020 Good does in a Croydon placement decision, and what would change it
HighQ3–Q4 2026
05
The homecare half of the registration that the 2020 supported living report does not describe
MediumQ4 2026
06
The two evidence areas you would put first if the next assessment landed this quarter
MediumQ4 2026
Show what each item turns on
Turns on what your support plans and daily records currently show about outcomes for the people you support, rather than about the tasks completed for them.
Turns on the systems you actually run — support planning, medicines, incidents, rotas, HR — and how long it takes to get one person’s full record out of them.
Turns on what your governance cycle produces in writing each month, and whether a finding can be traced to the change it caused.
Turns on what commissioners and social workers in Croydon have been asking you for that a six-year-old rating no longer answers on its own.
Turns on how much of what you deliver today sits on the homecare side of the registration, and what you can show for it.
Turns on your own read of where the evidence is thinnest — the one input no external analysis can supply.
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 evidence a service already generates — support plans, medicines records, supervision, incidents, people’s own feedback — so it reads cleanly against the questions the new framework asks, rather than being assembled the week before a visit. Almond Care is past the six-year band CQC has named as a re-assessment priority, adult social care assessments are not generally announced in advance, and re-mapping evidence is cheaper before an assessment than during one. In thirty minutes you’ll leave with the six items above narrowed to the three that matter first for Almond Care, and the first move on each.
