The CQC makes sure health and social care services provide people with safe, effective, compassionate, high-quality care and, wherever necessary, encourages care services to improve.

The CQC monitors, inspects and regulates services to make sure they meet fundamental standards of quality and safety and publishes what it finds, including performance ratings to help people choose care.

The CQC works in the following ways:

• Making sure services meet fundamental standards that people have a right to expect whenever they receive care
• Registering care services that meet CQC’s standards
• Monitoring, inspecting and regulating care services to make sure that they continue to meet the standards
• Carrying out in-depth investigations to look at care across the system

• Protecting the rights of vulnerable people, including those whose rights are restricted under the Mental Health Act
• Listening to and acting on people’s experiences of care
• Involving the public and people who receive care in its work and working in partnership with other organisations and local groups
• Challenging all providers, with the worst performers getting the most attention
• Making fair and authoritative judgements, supported by the best information and evidence
• Taking appropriate action if care services are failing to meet fundamental standards of quality and safety
• Reporting on the quality of care services, publishing clear and comprehensive information, including performance ratings to help people choose care.