Care Homes: Nutrition Mr. Burstow To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) what assessment his Department has made of the effect of the implementation of the Commission for Social Care Inspection’s guidance on clinical triggers: The management of nutritional care; (2) what progress the Commission for Social Care Inspection has made in developing suitable training for inspectors of standards of nutritional care. Mr. Ivan Lewis We are informed by the Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) that it produced the guidance for inspectors in June 2006. It is also available to service providers on the CSCI professionals website at: www.csci.org.uk/professional/default.aspx?page=7346&key. The guidance was developed in collaboration with a dietician. It reflects best practice as advised by nutritional groups and includes the need for services to carry out nutritional screening on admission and on a periodic basis for those people at risk of malnutrition. CSCI inspects providers against national minimum standards (NMS), published by the Secretary of State under section 23(1) of the Care Standards Act 2000. These include: Standard 8—Healthcare, of which Standard 8.9 relates to nutritional care—“nutritional screening is undertaken on admission and subsequently on a periodic basis, a record maintained of nutrition, including weight gain or loss, and appropriate action taken.” Standard 15—Meals and Mealtimes, includes a range of guidance to ensure that services provide people with a wholesome appealing balanced diet, at a time and place to suit the individual and that assistance when eating is offered as required. The “State of Social Care” report, published by CSCI in December 2006, indicates the level of achievement of the NMS by services for adults and older people since 2002-03 up to 2005-06. Copies of the report are available in the Library. Levels of achievement were given as percentages of services for younger adults and older people meeting or exceeding individual standards. These percentages are shown in the table, together with the most recent figures for the 2006-07 inspection year. -------------------------------------------------------------- | |Healthcare|Meals and mealtimes| -------------------------------------------------------------- |Care homes for younger adults| | | -------------------------------------------------------------- |2002-03 |86 |81 | -------------------------------------------------------------- |2003-04 |89 |86 | -------------------------------------------------------------- |2004-05 |89 |88 | -------------------------------------------------------------- |2005-06 |88 |90 | -------------------------------------------------------------- |2006-07 |88 |90 | -------------------------------------------------------------- | | | | -------------------------------------------------------------- |Care homes for older people | | | -------------------------------------------------------------- |2002-03 |73 |78 | -------------------------------------------------------------- |2003-04 |78 |82 | -------------------------------------------------------------- |2004-05 |78 |84 | -------------------------------------------------------------- |2005-06 |78 |85 | -------------------------------------------------------------- |2006-07 |79 |86 | -------------------------------------------------------------- CSCI participated as a stakeholder, in collaboration with the Department of Health, in the development of the Nutrition Action Plan. As a stakeholder, CSCI has made a commitment that it will use the Annual Quality Assurance Assessment (AQAA) to ask all providers to confirm that they carry out nutritional screening for people at risk of malnutrition. Where evidence raises concern about nutrition and malnutrition, CSCI will ensure that this is fully explored during the next inspection of the service and will track through the AQAA, the assessment of individual person centred plans to make sure that where required, nutritional screening has taken place. CSCI will be meeting with Skills for Care on 27 November 2007 to discuss the competences required by inspectors on nutritional care. The outputs from this work will inform training requirements, which will be delivered to inspectors within CSCI’s overall training programme.