Standards in Regulating Quality of Adult Community Health and Social Care: Systematic Narrative Review

ABSTRACT

Purpose

The growing range and complexity of community care services require robust approaches to ensuring quality.

Method

This review collated studies on the use of standards in regulating community health and social care using Social Care Online, MEDLINE and CINAHL databases. Studies were appraised by two reviewers and synthesized by study themes.

Results

Sixteen studies were synthesized under three themes:

• standards in quality assurance and quality improvement;

• effectiveness of standards; and

• design of regulatory standards.

Standards facilitate providers in self-regulation and enable regulators to support and monitor improvement. Effectiveness of standards depends on their language and interpretation, and on organizational factors. There was little evidence of scales within quality standards.

Discussion

There is continuing debate about self-regulation versus external regulation. Social care service regulation requires more research.

Conclusion

Regulatory organizations should take note of wider initiatives toward evidence-based practice in the design of quality standards.

KEYWORDS:

• Benchmarking
• quality improvement
• review
• literature
• standards of care

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge senior managers of the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority for Northern Ireland for their support amidst operational demands. We would like to thank Mrs Joanne Knox, Assistant Subject Librarian and the teaching team on the Research Methods Programme of the MSc Professional Development in Social Work at Ulster University for their inspiration and enthusiasm for getting knowledge into practice.

Declaration of interest

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

There is no funding to declare.