blog · Adult Social Care
The Single Assessment Framework Explained
What the five key questions and the quality statements actually mean for the way you evidence quality day to day.
Why the framework changed
The Single Assessment Framework replaced the old key lines of enquiry with a smaller set of quality statements written in the first person — "we" statements describing what a good service does.
The five key questions
Safe, Effective, Caring, Responsive and Well-led remain. What changed is how evidence is gathered: continuously, from six evidence categories, rather than only at a site visit.
What this means in practice
- Evidence must be current, not assembled the week before an inspection.
- Feedback from people using the service carries more weight than ever.
- Governance must show you find problems yourself, before the regulator does.
Where to start
Run a mock inspection against the quality statements, identify the statements you cannot evidence, and build your improvement plan around those gaps.
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