How CQC inspects gambling treatment services

Your assessment report

After each assessment we produce a report about the service. This presents a summary of our findings and judgements. The report focuses on what our findings mean for people using your services. It gives details of our judgements on whether services are providing people with support that is safe, effective, caring, and responsive, and whether the service is well-led.

When we find examples of good practice during the assessment, we describe them in the report to support learning and improvements. Our reports will also identify any areas for improvement and may include associated recommendations.

Making judgements

Unlike the registered services that CQC regulates, we do not have the legal powers to require providers of gambling treatment services to make improvements.

However, the assessment team will make a judgement on whether your service is meeting expectations. This is based on our assessment of the evidence we gather against our quality statements during the site visit, from the PIR, and from what service users and other stakeholders tell us. Our judgements will also be influenced by any contractual requirements and clinical guidelines, which are cross-referenced to the quality statements within the assessment framework.

When making our judgements, we consider the weight of each piece of relevant evidence. In most cases, we aim to verify our evidence with other sources to support our findings. When we have conflicting evidence, we will consider its source, how robust it is, and which piece of evidence is the strongest. We may conclude that we need to gather additional evidence or get specialist advice to make a judgement.

When we identify areas for improvement, we will usually make improvement recommendations in our report.

If we identify serious concerns during the assessment, for example serious safeguarding or other safety concerns, we will let you know straight away and also share these concerns with GambleAware.

Quality checks

Before finalising our reports, we check the quality and consistency through agreed internal assurance processes to ensure that our judgements are consistent. This will include a peer and management review, and consideration at a quality panel of CQC managers.

Factual accuracy check

When we have completed and checked the quality of the draft assessment report, we will send you a copy to review. We will ask you to check the factual accuracy and completeness of the information that we have used to reach our judgements. The factual accuracy checking process allows you to tell us:

• where information is factually incorrect
• where our evidence in the report may be incomplete.

The factual accuracy process gives inspectors and providers the opportunity to ensure that they see and consider all relevant information that will form the basis of our judgements. The factual accuracy process does not deal with complaints about CQC or challenges to proposed recommendations.

We will send the draft report to you by email. Our email will include:

• a copy of the draft report
• a factual accuracy form for you to submit a response to us
• instructions about the deadline to send any comments.

Once you have received the email with the draft report, you have 10 working days from the date of the email to return the form with any comments. You are responsible for making sure that the factual accuracy of the draft report has been checked by the appropriate person and that any comments regarding the factual accuracy of the draft report have been approved and submitted.

The draft report includes the draft judgements. If the inspector corrects any factual details in the report or accepts any additional evidence, they will amend the draft report. They will determine whether this has an impact on a judgement and will explain any changes in writing.

If you do not wish to submit a response, please tell us immediately. We will then be able to finalise your report.

How we share assessment information

Once the factual accuracy of the assessment report has been agreed, we will email a copy of the final report to you. We will also email a copy to GambleAware who will determine how reports are published. We will not publish assessment reports for gambling treatment services on CQC’s website or make them available to the public, as your services do not fall under the scope of regulation by CQC.

Our website will provide a link to GambleAware’s website, where the reports will be hosted and published.

Independent report on the services provided to service users

In addition to service-level assessments, our agreement with GambleAware and the Gambling Commission requires us to publish a report on our initial findings from the assessment programme and through engaging with providers and other stakeholders.

When we have assessed all providers we will publish a thematic report on the themes we identified during our assessments. This will focus on the experiences of service users and include examples of good practice and details of any areas where improvements are needed.

Governance of the assessment programme

We will have regular meetings with GambleAware and the Gambling Commission to monitor how the assessment programme is being carried out.

Complaints about CQC

We aim to provide the best possible service, and we welcome your feedback to help us improve our services and ensure we are responding to your concerns as best we can.

If you would like to make complaint, you can read the information on our website: Complain about CQC.