BASW comment on resignation of CQC’s Bower

Care Quality Commission (CQC) chief executive Cynthia Bower has resigned her post as a critical Department of Health report is published.

The report states that “more could have been done to manage risks during the early years of the organisation’s operation,” and “the role of the CQC has not been as clear as it needs to be to health and care providers, patients and the public.”

Ruth Cartwright, BASW England Manager, comments:

“We have long suspected that the birth of CQC from combining the Health Commission, CSCI and MH Act Commission was to save money, so it is not ethical to collude with unrealistic economy drives, only later to cite lack of funding as a reason for failure.

“CQC has failed in some regards, as the sad story of Winterbourne View and the ignoring of the whistleblower demonstrates. We have seen an erosion of inspections in health and social care, which makes these sorts of abuses more likely to be undetected or stopped, without a word of protest from the CQC hierarchy.

We can but hope the new chief executive to be appointed in the autumn will be clear what funding is needed to achieve a reasonable level of safeguarding for service users, and will put a stop to the use of unskilled inspectors, and a culture of under valuing those who carry out inspections, particularly in social care”.