A strong first rating, on a clock that is about to reset
Your first CQC assessment landed Good, with caring rated Outstanding. Here is the position you can verify today, the change now landing under it, the pattern your cohort is most often marked down on, and the one thing no benchmark can see.
The 30-second read
Position
Rated Good on your first assessment, with caring Outstanding (report published 20 May 2026). On our national homecare index you sit ahead of about 93% of 1,914 peers. A rating is only as current as the evidence behind it.
What's changing
The framework your next assessment sits under is being rewritten now — live end-2026, evidence-continuous and descriptor-led — so today's scores do not automatically carry forward.
The pattern
You lead the cohort, but the statements homecare services lose most points on are governance sustainability and safe medicines and staffing. Your own report already flags governance resting on a single manager.
The 30 minutes
What no benchmark can see is where your current evidence sits against the new statements. You leave with your top-three readiness gaps and the first action on each.
Your overall GreenM index (79) against the national homecare average of 71.3 (n = 1,914). Ahead of roughly 93% of peers.
Caring advantage
+16pts
Caring rated Outstanding — one of only about 91 homecare services (roughly 5% of the cohort) to hold it.
Well-led vs cohort
+12pts
Well-led sits well above the cohort average (69.8) — strong for a first assessment, and the area the new framework weights more heavily.
What’s changing under that rating
Draft ASC framework v9.1
That Good was earned against the current Single Assessment Framework. Your next comprehensive assessment will sit under CQC’s draft Adult Social Care Assessment Framework (v9.1, March 2026) — descriptor-led, live end-2026 — which reads the same service differently across six directional shifts.
Outcomes over processShift 01
Continuous, intelligence-led monitoringShift 02
Inequalities & efficiency in scopeShift 03
Workforce elevated within well-ledShift 04
Descriptor-led, no numerical scoreShift 05
Pilot summer, live end-2026Shift 06
Show the six framework shifts
SHIFT 01
Outcomes over process
Evidence moves from “do you have a policy” to “what difference does it make to people’s lives.”
SHIFT 02
Continuous, intelligence-led monitoring
Away from point-in-time inspection. CQC leans on data and lived experience between formal visits — evidence must be continuously current.
SHIFT 03
Inequalities & resource efficiency in scope
Both absent from the current framework, both newly weighted — for people using services and for the workforce.
SHIFT 04
Workforce elevated within well-led
Retention, conditions and staff experience become part of the leadership judgement — an area your own report already praises.
SHIFT 05
Descriptor-led, no numerical scoring
The 1–4 scale and percentage overall are being dropped from rating decisions. Today’s scores do not automatically translate forward.
SHIFT 06
Pilot summer 2026, live end-2026
33 quality statements → ~24 KLOEs. Implementation lands in the window your next comprehensive visit is likely to fall.
Where you sit in the national cohort
1,914 homecare agencies · England · framework-rated
Overall rating distribution · n = 1,914
Outstanding
66 · 3%
Good
1,427 · 75%
Requires improvement
367 · 19%
Inadequate
49 · 3%
Blue Fountain: rated Good overall, and one of the ~5% holding caring Outstanding. By overall index (79) you sit ahead of about 93% of the cohort — a strong position for a first assessment.
Solid · Blue Fountain Dashed · homecare peer average
Five key questions · score & peer delta
CQC AP24007 · published 20 May 2026
Key question
Blue Fountain vs peer average
Yours
Peer avg
Delta
Safe
75
69.2
+5.8
Effective
75
71.5
+3.5
Caring
90
73.9
+16.1
Responsive
71
72.2
−1.2
Well-led
82
69.8
+12.2
Four questions Good, caring Outstanding · zero breaches · zero enforcement. Responsive is your one at-cohort question — see below.
What inspectors typically find in this cohort
6 weakest statements · n = 1,914
The six quality statements where homecare agencies most consistently lose points under the current framework, on the CQC 1–4 scale. Each is likely to be re-examined at your next visit — under either framework.
Typical finding: audit follow-through inconsistent, oversight concentrated in the registered manager, no delegated audit ownership or succession, governance evidence spread across disconnected systems.
Safe · risk
Involving people to manage risks
2.64 / 4Cohort average
Typical finding: risk assessments not personalised, the person’s own voice missing from their plan, positive risk-taking applied inconsistently across a dispersed workforce.
Safe · medicines
Medicines optimisation
2.65 / 4Cohort average
Typical finding: MAR audit gaps, “as required” (PRN) protocols missing, time-critical medicines not flagged, competency checks not evidenced consistently across community staff.
Safe · staffing
Safe and effective staffing
2.66 / 4Cohort average
Typical finding: travel time and continuity not evidenced in rotas, missed and late-call monitoring incomplete, recruitment checks and induction records patchy.
Well-led · learning
Learning, improvement & innovation
2.75 / 4Cohort average
Typical finding: no clear loop from incident to learning to practice change, learning not shared consistently across a distributed team, improvement claimed but not evidenced.
Safe · culture
Learning culture
2.78 / 4Cohort average
Typical finding: near-miss data not captured, reflective practice undocumented, lessons-learnt not visibly shared with front-line carers.
Read as: your next inspector will arrive expecting these patterns, because the cohort consistently shows them. Blue Fountain scores at or above Good on all six — the work is keeping it there as the framework re-shapes what “Good” looks like.
From your inspector narrative
6 observations · AP24007
Strength
Caring rated Outstanding
The inspector described “an exceptional and deeply embedded culture of kindness” — staff staying through a thunderstorm to reassure a frightened person, buying an insulated tumbler to improve hydration, exercising alongside someone to help them qualify for surgery.
Strength
Workforce wellbeing scored 4
Interest-free loans, a pool of 15 shared vehicles, and structured support for overseas staff. Named a differentiator by the inspector, and elevated within well-led under the new framework.
Strength
Visible, values-led leadership
Capable-leaders and shared-culture statements both scored 4. Staff described the manager as “calm, compassionate and very involved,” with several progressing into senior roles.
Watch
Planning for the future scored 2
Your one sub-Good statement. End-of-life and anticipatory planning was “reactive rather than proactive,” and records did not consistently capture people’s wishes, faith or cultural preferences. The manager agreed to improve documentation.
Watch
Governance resting on one person
The report notes some quality-assurance processes “relied heavily on the registered manager” and that current arrangements “did not ensure long-term sustainability and resilience.”
Watch
Speaking-up not yet systematic
Culture is open, but there was “no consistent, formal mechanism to capture and review speaking-up themes,” so learning from concerns was not always shared across the service.
What this analysis can’t see
The reason for the conversation
Everything above is drawn from outside — your published assessment and the patterns across your peer cohort. What it cannot show is the one thing that decides your next rating: where your current, day-to-day evidence sits against the new quality statements — care plans, medicines records, audits and oversight as they stand today, not at your first inspection. That is the work of the thirty minutes: we map your real evidence to the draft framework with you, and you leave knowing your top-three readiness gaps rather than guessing at them.
What we’d work through together
6 items · the agenda for the call
This isn’t a to-do list to tackle alone — it’s the agenda we’d work through with you, drawn from your own narrative and the v9.1 draft framework. The first three are time-sensitive given the transition window; the rest compound.
01
Re-map your current evidence to the draft ASC KLOEs
NowPre-pilot · Q3 2026
02
Stand up a continuous-evidence cadence across dispersed visits
NowOngoing
03
Make future & end-of-life planning proactive and personalised
HighQ3 2026
04
Make governance resilient beyond a single manager
HighQ3 2026
05
Turn your Outstanding caring and workforce programmes into evidenced outcomes
MediumQ3–Q4 2026
06
Formalise speaking-up and people’s-voice capture
MediumQ4 2026
Show what each item involves on the call
Take your evidence against the 33 current quality statements and re-tag it to the ~24 KLOEs in v9.1 — best done structurally before CQC finalises the framework.
Move from “assemble before the visit” to “continuously current.” For a homecare service delivering across many homes, target evidence that is retrievable in minutes, not reconstructed after the fact.
Address your one sub-Good statement directly: capture people’s wishes, faith and cultural preferences ahead of need, so anticipatory and end-of-life planning reads as proactive.
Introduce delegated audit ownership and a simple succession model so oversight does not rest on one person — the exact fragility your report and the cohort both flag, and now weighted more heavily under well-led.
Pair your caring and workforce strengths with documented outcomes — retention metrics, wellbeing-programme results — so they evidence cleanly under outcomes-based judgement rather than as narrative.
Put a consistent mechanism behind speaking-up and family feedback, with theme detection, so learning is captured and shared — and feeds the lived-experience evidence the new framework leans on.
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 records, audits, people’s voice — so it reads cleanly against the new quality statements, not assembled the week before a visit. The framework lands in the window your next comprehensive assessment is likely to fall, which is why now is the moment to map it. In thirty minutes you’ll leave with your top-three readiness gaps, surfaced live against the v9.1 statements, and the first action on each.
