Quality in social care: what is excellence

What is the video about?

In this film, people who use services and academics consider extracts from  SCIE’s Social Care TV films  to help understand quality and excellence in social care.  Excellence is about enabling people to have choice and control over their lives, ensuring they have good relationships with those around them – family and friends, and staff – and supporting people to spend their time on meaningful activity.  The panel  consider  the quality of social care in different settings and with different people, to see how excellence can be achieved.

Messages for practice

1. Understanding what excellence means of people who use care and support can help services to be more effective by improving experiences and outcomes. Excellent care and suuport services can demonstrate that they are caring and responsive by making sure people have choice and control over their lives, that they have good relationships with families, friends and staff, and that they are able to spend their time purposefully and enjoyably.
2. To provide excellent social care, you have to really get to know the individual: their history, tastes, values, likes and dislikes.
3. Excellence isn’t a one-off innovation. Well-led organisations can show that commitment to continous improvement and quality assurance is part of their culture.
4. Communicating with the person, even when challenging, is key to providing excellent care.
5. Excellence can be achieved in any setting, with any group of people, whatever their needs, if the focus is always on the individual and their full range of needs and preferences.
6. Excellence can be affordable and will benefit people who use services and staff alike.

Who will find this useful?

People working in all social care settings; commissioners of social care; people using care and support and their carers, friends and families.