SCIE web resources: Star rating tool

Following the introduction of ‘star ratings’ in the UK Social Care residential sector in early 2008, SCIE have developed a Star Rating Tool (SRT) in association with the Prolix (Process-orientated Learning and Information Exchange) project. The tool allows care home organisations to self-assess their performance, related to the 38 official KLORA inspection ‘outcome headings’, and it generates the star rating that the care home is likely to achieve if an inspection were to be carried out today.

The tool assists performance management by explicitly linking the competencies required in a residential care home to the new government inspection performance measures – a 0 to 3 Star Rating. It evaluates the current strengths of the care home and guides the user to the relevant part of the National Occupational Standards which need to be included in the development programme of the organisation.

Key benefits of using the tool

The Star Rating Tool can be used to benefit residential and nursing care homes for the elderly in the following ways:

• as a pre-inspection diagnostic tool for homes, used by managers and owners or other managers in peer reviews, to assess the likely Star Rating an inspection would award
• to demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of a home across 38 measures of service performance, pointing to the relevant National Occupational Standards for staff at various levels
• by trainers and managers to raise awareness in staff groups of the standard KLORA outcome measures of quality used in independent inspections
• by individual staff to assess their own strengths and areas for development across the outcome measures, with guidance to relevant areas of improvement in the National Occupational Standards
• to compare assessments and monitor progress over time.

The Star Rating Tool is still being developed and we want to make it as useful as possible to the Care Home sector, so we would be grateful if you could complete a simple single page questionnaire after you have used it. This is not compulsory, and needs only to be done once. The questions are found under ‘Survey’ on the Home Page.

Access the Star Rating Tool.