NICE quality standards in social care
The Health and Social Care Act (2012) sets out a new responsibility for NICE to develop quality standards and other guidance for social care in England.
More information on NICE´s new remit in social care
Social care quality standards programme
In 2011 the Department of Health asked NICE to run a programme for developing social care quality standards using two topics. The programme examined draft methods and processes, the format and presentation of the quality standards in social care settings, and developed an approach to integrating related health and social care standards. This was done in collaboration with a range of social care organisations.
A workshop in July 2011 set out the context and vision for developing social care quality standards by NICE, in collaboration with Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) and a range of stakeholders from the social care community. Stakeholders gave us their views on the proposed process for developing social care quality standards and what could be done to ensure that they are useful and can be implemented in social care. A report outlining discussions from this workshop is available.
Topics
The Department of Health referred the following two topics to NICE in 2011:
- Supporting people to live well with dementia
- Health and wellbeing of looked-after children and young people
Further social care topics were referred to NICE in 2012 to develop guidance and quality standards.
Development
These two topics were prioritised by the Department of Health and Department for Education and referred to NICE by ministers. The NICE Quality Standards Team developed the quality standards in collaboration with Topic Expert Groups. For more information on the development processes used for these social care quality standards, see the Interim process guide
Email enquiries
If you have any queries on the social care quality standards programme, please email: socialcarequeries@nice.org.uk
Stakeholders
If you are interested in registering as a stakeholder to support development of the social care quality standards, please see the stakeholder registration page.
This page was last updated: 09 April 2013