Provider Quality Assurance and Contract Management

The Quality and Contracts Team at Somerset Council is passionate about ensuring high levels of quality care and support. This is underpinned by the Local Authority’s contractual responsibilities in relation to the contract management and oversight of commissioned services and is part of the statutory duties within the Care Act that dictate the local authority as part of its responsibilities needs to have a robust market oversight and to ensure a provider market that is able to meet the needs of its communities.

Our team offers guidance and supports local care providers to meet the quality standards and requirements of the Local Authority and regulators, and manages millions of pounds worth of contracts, made up of residential, nursing, supported living and extra care housing schemes provided by a wide range of voluntary and private sector organisations.

We offer a support service which includes:

Helping you to identify the reason(s) for any non-compliance following a CQC Inspection and supporting you to develop an action plan to enable you to return to compliance;
helping identify where systems and processes are not effective and where improvements can be made;
providing you with resources, advice, guidance and information on improving quality in all aspects of your service provision;
supporting you to develop and implement an effective quality assurance programme that will provide long term benefits in maintaining the quality of your service;
linking you to other teams and resources to support continued improvement.
supporting you and your residents in the event of business failure/closure, supported by a robust and well-tested business failure policy and checklist

How we will work with you

We will attend meetings with locality-based providers, commissioners and operational social care colleagues to support routine opportunities for communication and engagement
We will discuss with you the areas you require help with.
We will tailor our support to meet your specific needs.
We may visit your service to look at how policies and procedures are put into practice.
We will review documentation currently in use at your service.
We will make recommendations and offer advice to make improvements.
We will send you a written report following our visit, identifying what is going well, and making suggestions you may wish to consider to improve quality.

We adopt a collaborative approach with the intention of supporting you and your service.

Our Team includes staff with considerable professional experience of working with and for health and care services and working successfully with service providers and managers to identify and plan improvements to the quality of their service. All our staff have received both COVID vaccinations so are able to enter and support local Care Homes in line with guidance.

We understand how regulatory compliance works in practice and what is required to achieve a ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ Care Quality Commission rating.

Guidance and policy

Get in touch with us: ASCContractsandQualityMonitoring@somerset.gov.uk