Last week, Joe* told us [the Quality Care Campaign] about his history in the care sector and the thoughts that led him to start the process of opening his own domiciliary care business. This week, Joe will be explaining the Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) application, getting clients and starting his business to help the industry.
We asked Joe about his client base, the issues he had with CQC and how he overcame these issues to achieving a CQC registration.
He said: “The number of clients is up in the air. I have no idea. It depends on how we progress, and it depends on what size care packages we can get. It also depends how quickly we can grow while being sustainable and depends on getting the right people rather than doing what a lot of care companies do which is just hire any old person off the street and sending them to a vulnerable adult and wondering why things go wrong.”
Joe’s main concern is about having the right team behind him and has already begun recruiting for his new adventure. His registered manager for the business has already been hired and had to be registered prior to the business being operational.
Speaking about the CQC process, he said: “One of the big problems with the CQC is they strangulate businesses in all the wrong ways and don’t put the pressure on them where they should be which we can get to I suppose.
“Residents and families, I’m sure, would love to hear how company owners and the people that work there be recognised and have a good reputation, assuming they give a good service. This is another example of over-regulation and strangulation – I’m pretty sure I’ve made that word up, but it’s the word I use to describe the number of hoops I’ve had to jump through.
“I’m no liberal lefty-lovey type but you would think to open and start a domiciliary care or a home-care or care home or anything like that then you would need to have an endless pit of money that you can just throw away in order to satisfy the most basic requirements.”
Joe has been paying for a central Sussex office for four months that, he says, isn’t in need of. During the interview, I asked Joe if he considered working from home until he had acquired the CQC registration he needed to operate.
He said CQC agreed he could work from home, but he was unable to do so because he would be in violation of his lease on the flat he owns in Sussex. However, “I have thought about renting this place out and getting a small flat somewhere that I would live in. For me, as long as it has two rooms and I can use one for an office, but it just wasn’t feasible in the long run. It ended up being more expensive. This whole thing has just been such a hassle.”
So running his business out of his home was not possible meaning that while Joe eagerly awaits his registration, what will he think when we grilled him on the CQC process?
Next week, Joe tells us his opinion on the vigorous CQC process.
*Names have been changed for anonymity purposes