CQC’s Single Assessment Framework: What It Means for Activities, Training & Family Communication

Imagine this isn’t neglect. It’s a gap that the market is now catching up with.

The Single Assessment Framework has changed what CQC inspectors expect to see from care homes — and it’s caught a lot of providers off guard. Activities, staff training, and family communication used to be judged separately, almost informally. Now they’re all part of one continuous evidence trail, and most homes simply weren’t built to produce it.

Why the Single Assessment Framework Changed the Rules

Until late 2023, inspectors judged caring through conversations, not software reports or AI. The Single Assessment Framework changed that, and it’s changed how residents’ and families’ experiences count — as real, continuous evidence, not just conversation at the point of inspection.

The Three Separate Budgets Problem

Activities, training, and family communications have always sat on separate budgets. No vendor was ever paid to combine them — activity rooms, training sessions, and family meetings have always been treated as three different buckets. Our advisory services help care teams see where those gaps actually sit before an inspector finds them first.

Why Nobody Combined Them Until Now

Pulling all of this into one document, mapped across five regulations, takes real engineering. It took three years to work through. I built this after experiencing my own twin brother’s care and seeing what was happening at his nursing home in the US — it made me realise this was a missing link. This isn’t neglect. It’s a gap that the market is now catching up with, and it’s taken time to get here.

What Still Me Brings Together

Still Me is how your coordinator witnesses the resident’s evidence through the tracker. Family members get a report sent to them, and the activity coordinator gets CPD training so they’re trained on the different regulations tied to activity and how they map together — proving evidence to CQC regulators across Regulations 9 to 18.

This software combines family updates, staff CPD, and CQC evidence all in one place. It’s not that anyone neglected this before — the timing is only now right, because the Single Assessment Framework has made this kind of evidence a requirement for every care home owner. And it’s about time, because we’ve been waiting for this for a long time. Take a look at how the Still Me™ platform brings all three strands together automatically.

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