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Care Sync Experts delivers independent readiness assessments that can map evidence to quality statements relevant to the agreed scope. The review provides a prioritised action plan but is not a CQC inspection and cannot predict regulatory findings or a rating.
Experts
Our consultants review your service against CQC's current quality statements and relevant evidence categories. The review is an independent readiness assessment, not a CQC inspection, and it does not award or predict a CQC rating. It is designed to identify evidence gaps and practical actions your team can prioritise.
The difference is that our findings stay with you, giving your service time to act on recommendations and build a stronger evidence base for when the real inspection takes place.
An independent mock inspection can help your domiciliary care or supported living service review evidence against relevant CQC requirements. CQC decides what evidence to gather in its own assessment.
From £1,000 plus VAT
A CQC mock inspection from Care Sync Experts starts at £1,000 plus VAT for a single registered location. What takes it above that is size and scope rather than anything hidden: more locations, more people supported, a visit rather than a desktop review, and how much you want written up afterwards.
We publish the starting figure because almost nobody in this market does, and being asked to book a call before anyone will tell you a number is a poor way to spend your afternoon. If your service falls outside the shape described below, tell us and we will say so before you commit to anything.
A single registered location is the base. Each additional location adds to the day count, because the records, the staff and the people supported are different at each one.
A service holding Good and aiming higher needs a different review from one that has been rated Requires Improvement or Inadequate and has a timetable to meet.
The care plans, risk assessments and daily records we sample scale with the size of the service, and sampling too few of them would not tell you anything reliable.
A desktop review of records and governance costs less than a review that includes a visit, staff interviews and observation of practice.
A scored report against the quality statements with a prioritised action plan takes longer to produce than a verbal debrief, and is worth more when CQC arrives.
Some providers take the report and act on it themselves. Others want help closing the gaps. The second costs more and is a separate decision from the inspection itself.
The question worth asking any provider is not the fee, it is what comes back. A walk round and a list of observations is not a mock inspection. What you need is your evidence scored the way CQC scores it, so you know which quality statement is sitting at a 1 and therefore capping the rating for the whole key question. That is set out in the next section, and it is the part to compare when you are weighing one quote against another. Our mock inspection checklist covers what to prepare beforehand.
A CQC mock inspection follows a structured process designed to replicate the conditions of a real CQC assessment.
A CQC mock inspection follows a structured process designed to replicate the conditions of a real CQC assessment. When you commission a mock inspection from Care Sync Experts, the process begins with a planning call where we agree the scope, dates, and whether the visit will be announced or unannounced. We then carry out the on-site or hybrid inspection using the same assessment criteria that CQC inspectors apply under the Single Assessment Framework.
During the inspection day, our consultant reviews your policies, procedures, care plans, risk assessments, medication records, recruitment files, training matrices, and quality assurance documentation.
We also hold confidential conversations with frontline staff, team leaders, and managers to gauge their understanding of safeguarding, mental capacity, duty of candour, and person-centred care. Where your service supports people with a learning disability or autistic people, we assess compliance against the Right Support, Right Care, Right Culture framework.
At the end of the visit, we provide immediate verbal feedback to your registered manager and nominated individual.
Within five working days, you receive a written report that organises independent findings against the five key questions and relevant quality statements, with a prioritised action plan with recommended timescales. This report becomes a working document that your leadership team can use to drive improvements and gather evidence for a future CQC assessment. It is not a CQC inspection report and does not award a CQC rating.
The CQC replaced its Key Lines of Enquiry with the Single Assessment Framework in late 2023, and every mock inspection we deliver now maps directly to this updated methodology. Under the SAF, the CQC assesses services against 34 quality statements grouped under the five key questions. Each quality statement receives a score from 1 to 4 based on the evidence gathered across six evidence categories.
Understanding how these categories work matters because inspectors weight their judgements differently depending on the type of service.
For domiciliary care and supported living, the six evidence categories are: people's experience of care, feedback from staff and leaders, feedback from partners, observation, processes, and outcomes.
Our mock inspection assesses your service against every relevant quality statement and scores your performance using the same 1 to 4 scale, so you see exactly where your strengths lie and where targeted improvement will have the greatest impact on your rating.
The shift to the SAF also means that CQC can update your rating at any point, not just after a scheduled inspection. This continuous assessment model makes ongoing readiness more important than ever, and a mock inspection from Care Sync Experts gives you a clear snapshot of where your service stands right now.
Domiciliary care providers face inspection challenges that differ from residential settings. Your staff work in people's homes across multiple locations, which means inspectors focus heavily on how you manage remote working, lone working risks, medication administration in the community, and communication between office teams and care workers in the field.
Our mock inspections for domiciliary care examine how your electronic care planning system supports real-time recording, whether your visit scheduling allows adequate travel time and avoids rushed calls, and how you monitor staff performance when managers cannot directly observe every care visit. We review call monitoring data, spot-check records, supervision notes, and complaint logs to identify patterns that CQC inspectors would also flag.
We assess whether your statement of purpose accurately reflects how your service operates, whether your staffing model matches your declared capacity, and whether your risk assessments cover the scenarios your care workers encounter daily.
For domiciliary care services preparing for their first CQC inspection following registration, a mock inspection provides essential baseline data. If your service registered under the updated February 2026 requirements, where the CQC now routinely returns incomplete applications, a mock inspection confirms that your operational systems match the documentation you submitted during registration.
Care Sync Experts also reviews your staff recruitment files against Schedule 3 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, checking that DBS certificates, references, proof of identity, proof of address, right to work documents, and a full employment history with a written explanation of any gaps are present and correctly filed for every member of staff.
Maintaining CQC compliance after registration is an ongoing operational responsibility, not a one-off task.
The providers who achieve and sustain Good or Outstanding ratings treat compliance as a continuous process embedded in their daily operations rather than something they prepare for when an inspection is announced.
Care Sync Experts helps providers build quality management systems that maintain compliance as a matter of routine. This includes establishing regular audit cycles where you review your own performance against the CQC's quality statements, implementing governance meetings where your management team discusses incidents, complaints, and improvement actions, and creating feedback mechanisms that capture the views of the people you support, their families, and your staff.
Your policies and procedures form the backbone of your compliance framework, but they only deliver value if your staff understand them, follow them, and receive supervision that reinforces the standards they set. Care Sync Experts provides policies that are written in plain language, structured around the tasks your staff actually perform, and updated regularly to reflect changes in legislation and CQC guidance.
When the CQC does inspect, preparation makes the difference between a rating that reflects your hard work and one that misses what you have achieved. Our mock inspection service replicates the CQC inspection process so your team knows what to expect, your evidence is organised, and your registered manager can articulate your service's strengths with confidence.
Supported living services operate under additional regulatory expectations, particularly where people have a learning disability, are autistic, or have complex mental health needs. The CQC applies specific conditions to supported living registrations, and mock inspections for these services must reflect those conditions to be useful.
Our supported living mock inspections assess compliance with the Right Support, Right Care, Right Culture framework, which the CQC uses to evaluate whether people receive person-centred support that promotes choice, control, and independence. We examine how your service develops support plans that reflect each person's communication needs, preferred routines, and long-term goals rather than fitting people into a service model designed around staff convenience.
We also review restrictive practice governance, including how your service records, monitors, and reduces the use of physical interventions, environmental restrictions, and chemical restraint through medication. For services supporting people detained under the Mental Health Act or subject to Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards, our mock inspection checks that your staff understand the legal frameworks and that your documentation demonstrates lawful practice.
The inspection covers tenancy arrangements and how your service respects the boundary between care and accommodation. Inspectors expect to see that people have genuine control over their living space, their daily routine, and who enters their home. Our mock inspection assesses whether your service delivers on these principles in practice, not just in policy.
We also assess whether your staff training records demonstrate that learning translates into practice. Skills for Care sets the benchmark for workforce development in adult social care, and our mock inspection checks that your training matrix covers mandatory topics including moving and handling, infection prevention and control, fire safety, first aid, safeguarding adults, mental capacity, food hygiene, and equality and diversity, with refresher dates that show ongoing compliance.
Staff performance during an inspection directly shapes the rating your service receives.
Inspectors speak with care workers, team leaders, and managers to assess their understanding of the people they support, the risks they manage, and the regulatory framework they operate within. A mock inspection from Care Sync Experts includes staff coaching that prepares your team for these conversations
We help staff articulate what they do every day in the language that inspectors expect to hear. This means moving beyond general statements like "we provide good care" to specific examples that demonstrate person-centred practice, such as:
Our staff coaching sessions cover the five key questions and explain what inspectors look for under each heading. We run scenario-based exercises where staff practise responding to the types of questions CQC inspectors ask, including questions about:
This coaching sits alongside the mock inspection itself and gives your team confidence that translates directly into stronger performance when inspectors arrive.
Every CQC inspection, whether real or mock, centres on five key questions that determine your overall rating. Understanding what each question covers helps your service prepare effectively and build an evidence portfolio that demonstrates compliance.
Safe inspectors assess how your service protects people from abuse, neglect, and avoidable harm. They examine safeguarding procedures, incident reporting, risk assessment processes, medication management, infection prevention and control, staffing levels, and the physical safety of the environments where care takes place. For domiciliary care, this extends to lone working arrangements and how your service manages risks in people's own homes.
Effective the focus shifts to whether people's care and support achieves good outcomes. Inspectors look at how you assess people's needs before starting care, how you develop care plans, how you involve people and their families in decision-making, how you coordinate with other services such as GPs, district nurses, and social workers, and how your staff receive the training and supervision they need to deliver effective support.
Under Caring inspectors assess whether your staff treat people with kindness, dignity, and respect. They observe interactions, read feedback from people who use the service, and speak with families and advocates. The evidence here comes largely from people's lived experience of your service.
Under Responsive The CQC examines whether your service meets people's individual needs and responds to their preferences. This covers how you personalise care plans, how you handle complaints, how you support end-of-life care, and how you adapt your service when people's needs change.
Under Well-led inspectors assess the quality of your leadership, governance, and management. They examine how you monitor quality, how you learn from incidents and complaints, how you engage with staff and stakeholders, and whether your service has a clear vision and strategy that your whole team understands and delivers.
These are recurring areas worth checking in domiciliary care and supported living services. Reviewing them can help your team identify evidence gaps and prioritise action before a CQC assessment, but it does not predict the outcome of an assessment or a future rating.
Check that recruitment files contain the information and checks required for each role, such as applicable DBS information, employment history, references and professional registration. CQC considers evidence in context; one file does not automatically determine a rating.
Review whether care plans reflect each person's current needs, preferences and goals, are accessible to the person and are updated when needs change. CQC may use care-record reviews as processes evidence where relevant to the assessment.
Review medication administration records, protocols for "as required" medicines, staff competency evidence and how discrepancies are investigated and resolved. The evidence relevant to medicines depends on the service and assessment scope.
Review whether governance systems support auditing, learning from incidents, gathering feedback and making improvements. These areas relate to Well-led quality statements, but an independent review cannot determine the CQC rating.
Care Sync Experts offers both announced and unannounced mock inspections, and the right choice depends on what your service needs at this stage of your compliance journey.
provides a more realistic picture of how your service performs on a typical day. Because staff do not know when the consultant will arrive, the findings reflect everyday practice rather than a carefully prepared presentation. Unannounced inspections are particularly valuable for services that have already achieved a Good or Outstanding rating and want to confirm that standards have not slipped, or for providers whose leadership wants an honest assessment of frontline performance
An announced mock inspection works well for services preparing for their first CQC inspection or those that want to use the mock as a training exercise for the whole team. With advance notice, your registered manager can ensure that key staff are available on the day, that documentation is accessible, and that the team understands the purpose of the visit. Announced inspections allow your service to demonstrate its best performance and identify the gaps between your current standard and what the CQC expects.
Many of our clients schedule both types across the year. An announced inspection at the start of the financial year establishes a baseline and creates an improvement plan, followed by an unannounced visit six months later to measure progress and identify any areas where standards have drifted. This approach creates a continuous improvement cycle that aligns with the CQC's own continuous assessment model.
Choosing the right provider for your mock inspection matters because the quality of the assessment directly affects the value you receive. Not all consultancies deliver mock inspections that match the depth and rigour of a real CQC visit, so understanding what to look for helps you make the right decision for your service.
Look for consultants who can explain how their experience relates to your service type, CQC's current assessment framework, the 34 quality statements and the 6 evidence categories. Ask how they keep their methods current and distinguish an independent readiness review from a CQC assessment.
The written report should organise findings against the relevant key questions and quality statements, while making clear that it is not a CQC report or rating. It should include the evidence reviewed and a prioritised action plan with owners and recommended timescales.
Ask whether the provider offers post-inspection support. A mock inspection identifies gaps, but closing those gaps often requires ongoing guidance, whether that involves rewriting care plans, restructuring your governance framework, coaching staff, or preparing your evidence folder. Care Sync Experts provides follow-up support through our wider guidance and support services, so your mock inspection connects to a pathway of sustained improvement rather than sitting as an isolated exercise.
Check that the provider has experience with your service type. The evidence relevant to domiciliary care differs from that for supported living, residential care and nursing homes. A provider that understands your sector should deliver findings that are specific, actionable and relevant to your service.
Care Sync Experts brings a depth of CQC knowledge that comes from working with providers at every stage of their regulatory journey, from first registration through to post-inspection recovery and improvement. Our mock inspection service sits within a wider compliance support framework, which means the findings from your inspection feed directly into practical, actionable next steps.
Our consultants have a track record of helping domiciliary care and supported living providers across England move from Requires Improvement to Good and from Good to Outstanding.
We understand the specific challenges that community-based care providers face, including the complexity of managing remote teams, maintaining documentation standards across multiple locations, and demonstrating person-centred practice when inspectors cannot observe care delivery directly.
We stay current with every change to the CQC's assessment methodology, including the ongoing consultation around the 2025/26 business plan and any updates to the Single Assessment Framework. When the CQC changes how it assesses services, we update our mock inspection methodology to match, so your preparation always reflects the latest expectations.
Care Sync Experts operates across England, supporting providers of all sizes from single-location services to multi-site organisations. Whether your service has 10 people or 200, we scale our mock inspection to match your needs and deliver findings that are proportionate, specific, and directly applicable to your service.
Our CQC Inspection support
To book a CQC mock inspection, call 0333 577 0877 or email hello@caresyncexperts.co.uk. We respond to all enquiries within one working day.
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Complete CQC compliance guide for care providers.
CQC PIR writing for adult social care, fixed fee £750 + VAT, drafted to the 500-word limits.
Ongoing CQC consultancy for registered providers, from audits to inspection support.