What are policies and procedures in health and social care?

Health and safety policies and procedures put in place in social care settings protect those who work in and use the services by minimising the risks of injury, illness and harm. They also ensure that the environment is safe and fit for purpose, and that staff are properly trained and equipped to carry out their roles safely.

Compared to other sectors the range of policies a health and social care provider needs is extensive. An increase in complexity of care or support typically means increased numbers or policies and procedures too.

In order to register as a care service in any part of the United Kingdom you will need to have rigorous policies and procedures in place. They must:

Policies and procedures are used together to enable those working in a care setting, but to understand them properly it is important to disentangle the two and establish what each means separately.

In short, a policy in health and social care sets out what is to be done and why, and how the organisation seeks to approach specific areas.

For example, a Whistleblowing policy would outline (but not be limited to):

A procedure in health and social care is the written set of step-by-step instructions for how a specific activity is to be conducted. For example, in the case of medicines administration.

Unlike a policy it is less about the overall attitude and approach. It will guide a member of staff through each step, for example when in assisting service users with eating and drinking or administering medication.

As I outlined to you above, policies and procedures in health and social care require a lot of time and expertise to produce. While lots of providers used to outsource this work to consultancies (and pay a fair whack for it), policies and procedures software has taken off and is starting to take over!

To register your care service, you need to have a number of care home policy and procedures in place. These will be categorized into three groups and it’s advised that these should be uploaded in their groups, in a format where the maximum file is under 2MB. The three group categories are:

• Quality Management
• Good Governance
• Safeguarding

Care home policies and procedures examples of quality management policies include:

• Administration of medication other than oral and topical
• Care planning and personalised assessment
• Complaints
• Corporate risk management
• Mental Capacity Act 2005 and Deprivation of Liberty
• Medication – homely remedies
• Management of medicines
• Infection prevention and control
• Quality assurance
• Safe handling and administration of medicines
• Service user risk management
• Topical medication application guidance
• Record keeping

Examples of good governance policies include:

• Business continuity
• Health and Safety
• Health and safety policy statement
• Staff induction
• Staff recruitment
• Staff supervision and spot checks
• Training and development

Examples of safeguarding policies include:

• Safeguarding audits
• Safeguarding children in an adult setting

Access Policies and Procedures contain all of the policies and procedures your care service needs to register and run smoothly and legally. All of these documents are contained within a digital platform with a mobile app, which allows care staff to access and read the important information wherever they are, at any time.

This means your team will worry less about admin, they won’t ever be without the essential policies and procedures in care homes and this option is significantly cheaper than hiring consultants or using other policy and procedure writing services.