Care Policies and Procedures for Every Regulated Service

Care Sync Experts provides over 590 CQC, CIW and RQIA compliant care policies and procedures covering domiciliary care, supported living and specialist services. Our team, which includes a former CQC Senior Inspector Manager with over 20 years of regulatory experience, writes every policy.

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Running a care service without the right policies in place puts your registration, your staff and your service users at risk. Whether you are registering with the CQC in England, CIW in Wales or RQIA in Northern Ireland, regulators expect to see comprehensive, current and tailored policies and procedures from day one.

Your policies are delivered and managed through Care Sync Pro, our proprietary policy management platform that gives you version control, staff access, audit trails and automatic updates whenever regulations change.

This is not a generic template library. Every policy we produce is branded to your company, tailored to your service type and mapped to the specific quality statements and regulations your inspector will assess.

Care Sync Experts consultant reviewing policy documents with a care provider

What Are Policies and Procedures in Health and Social Care?

Policies and procedures in health and social care define how your service operates, how your staff should respond in specific situations and how you meet your legal and regulatory obligations. They cover everything from safeguarding and medication management to recruitment, complaints handling, infection prevention, data protection and risk assessment.

For care providers regulated by the CQC, your policies must demonstrate compliance with the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 and the CQC Fundamental Standards. In Wales, policies must align with the Regulation and Inspection of Social Care (Wales) Act 2016 and CIW National Minimum Standards. In Northern Ireland, policies must meet RQIA Minimum Standards under the Health and Personal Social Services (Quality, Improvement and Regulation) (Northern Ireland) Order 2003.

You do not write policies once and file them away. Your staff should access them regularly, regulators will review them during inspections, and you must update them whenever legislation, guidance or best practice changes. A care service with outdated or generic policies will struggle to demonstrate compliance, no matter how good the care delivery is.

Key Offerings by Care Sync Experts

Care professionals reviewing CQC domiciliary care policies

CQC Domiciliary Care Policies and Procedures

Domiciliary care agencies registered with the CQC in England need policies that address every aspect of delivering personal care in people's own homes. The CQC assesses your service against five key questions (Safe, Effective, Caring, Responsive, Well-Led) and 34 quality statements, and your policies are the foundation that supports your evidence across all of them.

Care Sync Experts provides a complete set of CQC domiciliary care policies and procedures covering safeguarding adults and children, medication management and administration, staff recruitment, selection and DBS checks, lone working and staff safety, infection prevention and control, complaints and compliments handling, data protection and GDPR compliance, risk assessment and management, mental capacity and best interests, equality, diversity and human rights, whistleblowing and duty of candour, health and safety at work, and business continuity planning.

We write every policy to align with the CQC's single assessment framework and the 34 quality statements introduced under the new inspection methodology. We map each policy to the specific quality statement it supports, so you can demonstrate compliance with confidence during registration and inspection.

You can download three free sample domiciliary care policies to see the quality, depth and regulatory alignment before you commit.

A care worker supporting a service user during a policy review

Supported Living Policies and Procedures

Supported living services registered for personal care with the CQC require policies that go beyond standard domiciliary care. Your policies must reflect the principles of Right Support, Right Care, Right Culture, the CQC's framework for services supporting people with learning disabilities and autistic people.

Care Sync Experts provides CIW-specific domiciliary care policies written to meet Welsh regulatory requirements. These cover the Welsh Active Offer for language provision, the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014, responsible individual and service manager duties, quality of care reviews and annual returns, statement of purpose aligned to CIW requirements, safeguarding under the Wales Safeguarding Procedures, complaints aligned to the Welsh regulations, and staff registration with Social Care Wales.

Wales has its own safeguarding procedures, its own training requirements through Social Care Wales, and its own inspection methodology. Our policies are written by consultants who understand the Welsh regulatory landscape and who have supported providers through successful CIW registration and inspection.

You can download three free sample CIW policies to see how they differ from CQC policies and how they meet Welsh requirements.

Consultants reviewing RQIA domiciliary care policy documents

RQIA Domiciliary Care Policies for Northern Ireland

Domiciliary care agencies in Northern Ireland are regulated by the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority under the Health and Personal Social Services (Quality, Improvement and Regulation) (Northern Ireland) Order 2003 and the Domiciliary Care Agencies Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2007. RQIA has its own minimum standards, inspection methodology and regulatory expectations that differ from both CQC and CIW.

Care Sync Experts provides RQIA-specific domiciliary care policies covering the RQIA four domains of quality (is care safe, is care effective, is care compassionate, is the service well led), incident reporting and notifications to RQIA, the Adult Safeguarding Prevention and Protection in Partnership procedures, staff registration with the Northern Ireland Social Care Council (NISCC), Access NI checks and vetting procedures, HSC Trust referral and assessment processes, the Northern Ireland Adult Safeguarding Partnership, and complaints aligned to RQIA regulations.

Very few policy providers offer RQIA-specific policies. Most sell generic CQC policies and suggest you adapt them for Northern Ireland, which leaves compliance gaps. Our policies are written specifically for the Northern Ireland regulatory environment and are reviewed against the RQIA minimum standards for domiciliary care agencies.

You can download three free sample RQIA policies to review the Northern Ireland-specific content and regulatory alignment.

Care Sync Pro: Your Policy Management Platform

Care Sync Pro is our proprietary policy management platform built specifically for care providers. Unlike subscription-based policy libraries where you lose access if you stop paying, Care Sync Pro gives you ownership of your policies with ongoing platform access for management and updates.

Version control with a full audit trail showing every update, amendment and review

Staff access controls with individual logins so you can track who has read which policy

Automatic notifications when policies are updated to reflect regulatory changes

Digital signatures for policy acknowledgement and staff training records

An inspection ready dashboard showing your compliance status across all policy areas

Mobile access so your care staff can read policies on any device whilst working in the community

The platform replaces the need for paper policy folders

Your policies live in one secure location, they are always current and your inspector can see the evidence of staff engagement with them.

Care Sync Pro is included with every policy package from Care Sync Experts. There is no additional licence fee and no ongoing subscription for the platform itself.

Why Care Providers Choose Care Sync Experts

We are not a template library or a software company that bolted on some policy content. Care Sync Experts is a specialist healthcare consultancy where every policy is written by people who have sat on the other side of the inspection table.

Expert Led Policy Development

Our founder and lead consultant is a former CQC Senior Inspector Manager with over 20 years of experience in health and social care regulation. That means our policies are not just compliant on paper. They are written with an understanding of what inspectors actually look for, what questions they ask, and where most providers fall short.

Regulator Specific Policy Coverage

We cover three jurisdictions CQC in England, CIW in Wales, RQIA in Northern Ireland with policies written specifically for each regulator, not adapted from a generic template.

A Care Sync Experts team session on policy development

A former CQC inspector reviewing care policy documents

Extensive Policy Library with Platform Access

We provide over 590 policies across domiciliary care, supported living and specialist services, making this one of the largest policy libraries available from a single provider. Every policy comes with Care Sync Pro, our management platform, at no extra cost.

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Frequently asked questions

The CQC does not publish a definitive list of required policies, but inspectors expect to see policies covering safeguarding, medication management, recruitment, complaints, infection prevention, health and safety, data protection, equality and diversity, whistleblowing, duty of candour, mental capacity, and business continuity as a minimum. For domiciliary care registration, you will also need policies on lone working, key holding, and community-based risk assessment. Care Sync Experts provides over 590 policies that cover every area the CQC assesses, mapped to all 34 quality statements.

As a minimum, policies should be reviewed annually and updated whenever there is a change in legislation, regulation, guidance or best practice. The CQC will check that your policies reflect current requirements, and outdated policies are one of the most common findings in Requires Improvement and Inadequate ratings. Care Sync Pro automatically notifies you when any of your policies have been updated, and our team monitors regulatory changes continuously so your policies are always current.

Some policies will be similar, but supported living services require additional policies around tenancy rights, positive behaviour support, restrictive practice, community inclusion, and the Right Support, Right Care, Right Culture framework. Using identical policies for both service types is a compliance risk because the CQC assesses supported living services against different expectations. Care Sync Experts provides separate, tailored policy sets for domiciliary care and supported living to ensure each service type meets its specific regulatory requirements.

Yes. We provide a separate policy set written specifically for domiciliary support services regulated by Care Inspectorate Wales. These policies align with the Regulation and Inspection of Social Care (Wales) Act 2016, the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014, CIW National Minimum Standards, and Welsh Safeguarding Procedures. They are not adapted CQC policies. They are written from scratch for the Welsh regulatory environment, including requirements around the Welsh Active Offer for language provision and registration with Social Care Wales.

Yes. Care Sync Experts is one of very few providers offering policies written specifically for the Northern Ireland regulatory framework. Our RQIA policies cover the four domains of quality, the Domiciliary Care Agencies Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2007, RQIA minimum standards, NISCC registration requirements, and the Northern Ireland Adult Safeguarding Partnership procedures. These are not adapted from English policies. They are built for the Northern Ireland context from the ground up.

Care Sync Pro is our proprietary policy management platform. Unlike QCS, which operates on a subscription model where you lose access to policies if you cancel, Care Sync Pro gives you ownership of your policies with ongoing platform access for management and compliance tracking. Care Sync Pro includes version control, staff access with digital acknowledgement, automatic update notifications, and an inspection-ready compliance dashboard. It is included at no additional cost with every policy package from Care Sync Experts. QCS charges a recurring subscription and the policies remain within their platform.