Research into best practice in identifying and acting upon 'soft signals'
Service quality in health and social care is subject to a range of measures such as waiting times and patient and staff satisfaction. But there are other observable indicators that can raise concerns – or signify good practice. These are things like:
- how visitors are welcomed to a clinic or care home
- how open staff are to speak to external organisations or professionals
- the quality of respectful relationships between staff and service users.
These are known as ‘soft signals’ and can be hugely telling to regulators and Experts by Experience, although they can also be difficult to capture and report. Such signals data can be a valuable source of evidence to aid earlier identification of systemic issues for a service regulator. But understanding what they are, and how they can be used is challenging.
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the regulator for the health and social care sector. In January 2024 they commissioned SQW and our partner, the King’s Fund Library Service, to deliver a rapid literature review to explore how regulators and health care and adult social care bodies identify, use, and escalate ‘soft signals’. We will interview key stakeholders both to inform the literature review and to interpret its findings. We will explore effective approaches to integrate soft signals data into wider evidence collection processes, and in which soft signals data have led to improved outcomes. The study runs from January to March 2024.
We have issued a call for evidence, to identify documents which could contribute to the review.
This is a chance for managers, academics, and other experts to identify and share any reports, documents or other evidence that could be helpful to the review. You may have knowledge of, or access to, evidence sources that could be relevant, but are not publicly available or identifiable through usual search processes. Any evidence you provide will be considered as part of our evidence sifting process.
The full list of requirements for submitting evidence can be found below.
Please send you responses either to Rhona Murray at SQW (rmurray@sqw.co.uk), or Amanda Chorley at CQC (amanda.chorley@cqc.org.uk).
Please respond by Tuesday 13 February 2024. Thank you – your help with this is much appreciated.
Review scope for evidence submission
