From April 2010, the regulation of health and adult social care changed. Legislation is bringing in a new registration system that applies to all regulated health and adult social care services.

In 2008 Government decided to merge the existing regulatory bodies for health (the Health Care Commission) and social care (the Commission for Social Care Inspection), along with the body tasked with looking after the interests of people detained under the Mental Health Act, into a single, independent regulator, the Care Quality Commission (CQC). The CQC took up its new responsibilities on 1 April 2009 and began the process of registering all providers of health and social care.  As part of this process it will become mandatory private practices to register with the CQC in 2011.

The aim of merging these bodies is to ensure that all providers of health and social care are operating to a single, consistent set of standards as well as giving service users, their carers and families a single port of call for information on services, their quality and availability. The CQC is aiming to achieve a registration system that encourages consistency, enables comparison, and recognises good practice. To achieve these aims, the CQC has set out 16 registration requirements based on the core risks inherent in the provision of care. In order to obtain and maintain registration we will demonstrate compliance with the regulations in the following areas:

• Care and welfare of service users
• Assessing and monitoring the quality of provision
• Safeguarding vulnerable service users
• Management of medicines and medical devices
• Cleanliness and infection control
• Meeting nutritional needs
• Safety and suitability of premises
• Safety, availability and suitability of equipment
• Respecting and involving service users
• Consent to care and treatment
• Complaints
• Records
• Competence and suitability of workers
• Staffing
• Effective management of workers
• Cooperating with other providers