Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to encourage (a) staff, (b) patients and (c) families of patients to be involved in Care Quality Commission inspections.

The Care Quality Commission encourages staff and service users and their families to inform the regulator of experiences of care and any concerns using the Give Feedback on Care service, which is available at the following link:

https://www.cqc.org.uk/give-feedback-on-care

Those who use services can participate in inspections through the Experts by Experience programme. During inspections, Experts by Experience consult service users and their families, which is used to support the inspectors’ judgements.