Domiciliary Care Policies and Procedures: Complete List for CQC Providers

By Kizito Chukwude

Domiciliary care policies and procedures are the operating manual for your service. They explain how you keep people safe, how staff should act, how managers monitor quality and how the provider meets CQC expectations.

This list is written for UK domiciliary care providers, registered managers, owners, nominated individuals and new CQC registration applicants.

Core Policies Every Domiciliary Care Provider Needs

Safeguarding Adults Policy and Procedure

This should explain how staff recognise abuse, report concerns, protect people from immediate harm and refer to the local authority. It should include the Care Act 2014, Section 42, Making Safeguarding Personal and your local safeguarding route.

CQC inspectors check that the policy names the local authority safeguarding adults team with the correct contact number, identifies a designated safeguarding lead by name, sets out the three-stage Section 42 test in plain language, and covers all ten categories of abuse listed in the statutory guidance. They will also ask care workers directly about the referral process — if the policy and the staff answers do not match, the inspector concludes the policy is not embedded. For a deeper guide, see our Care Act 2014 safeguarding policy guide.

Medication Policy and Procedure

This should cover prompting, assisting, administering, MAR charts, medication errors, refused medication, controlled drugs where applicable and staff competency. The detail must match the level of medication support your service provides.

Inspectors look for evidence of observed competency assessment for every staff member who handles medication, an active MAR audit cycle, and a documented response to medication errors. They will ask staff what they would do in an error scenario, and the answer must match the policy. Our medication policy checklist sets out exactly what the policy must cover and what CQC inspectors actually use during inspection.

Care Planning Policy and Procedure

This should explain assessment, care planning, consent, review, service user involvement, family involvement, risk assessment and how care plans are updated when needs change.

Inspectors check whether care plans capture what matters to the person, not just what is needed for them. They check review frequency — typically every three months as a minimum — and whether unscheduled reviews are triggered when needs change. The policy must specify both the routine review cycle and the events that trigger an unscheduled review, including hospital admission and discharge, a significant change in mobility or cognition, a safeguarding concern, or a complaint.

Risk Assessment Policy

Domiciliary care risk assessments often cover moving and handling, falls, medication, environment, lone working, nutrition, pressure care, behaviour, infection control and emergency arrangements.

CQC expects risk assessments to be specific to the individual and to the visit, not generic. Inspectors look for evidence that risk assessments are reviewed, updated when circumstances change, and shared with the care worker before they enter the service user's home — not handed over at the door. The policy should specify how new risks are captured between scheduled reviews and how that information reaches the workers visiting that day. For lone-working specifics, see our lone working policy guide.

Complaints Policy and Procedure

This should explain how complaints are received, acknowledged, investigated, responded to and used for learning. It should also explain escalation routes and how complaints are recorded.

Inspectors check whether the complaints log shows acknowledgement timescales, investigation steps, response timescales, and learning shared across the service. A log that records receipt and outcome but no learning is a flag under Well-Led. The policy should specify a maximum acknowledgement window (typically three working days), a target response timeframe (often twenty working days), and a clear escalation route to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman. Our complaints policy guide walks through the structure inspectors expect.

Staff and Workforce Policies

• Recruitment and selection policy
• DBS and safer recruitment procedure
• Induction policy
• Training and competency policy
• Supervision and appraisal policy
• Spot check and observation policy
• Disciplinary and grievance policy
• Whistleblowing policy

These policies should not only list requirements. They should state how often supervision happens, how often spot checks happen, how new staff are assessed, how appraisals are completed and how poor practice is managed.

Governance and Quality Policies

• Quality assurance policy
• Audit schedule
• Incident and accident reporting policy
• Duty of candour policy
• Data protection and UK GDPR policy
• Record keeping policy
• Business continuity plan
• Equality, diversity and inclusion policy

For CQC, governance is not just paperwork. It is how you know the service is safe. Your policies should explain what you check, how often you check it, who is responsible and what happens when problems are found. The duty of candour policy in particular is often weakly written — it must specify who is responsible for triggering the duty, what counts as a notifiable safety incident, the timescales for verbal and written notification, and how the apology and follow-up are documented.

Clinical and Specialist Policies

Depending on the service you provide, you may also need policies for moving and handling, infection prevention and control, catheter care, stoma care, continence, nutrition and hydration, pressure care, end of life care and mental capacity.

Do not hold policies that have nothing to do with your service just to look comprehensive. But if your staff support an area of care, the relevant procedure should be clear and practical.

CQC Registration Documents

If you are applying to register a domiciliary care agency with CQC, policies are only part of the picture. You may also need a Statement of Purpose, service user guide, staff handbook, nominated individual information, quality assurance framework and other supporting documents.

The registration documents should match your policies. If your Statement of Purpose says you support adults with dementia, your policies and training arrangements need to reflect that.

How Often Should Policies Be Reviewed

Every policy in your service should be reviewed at least annually. The review date and the reviewer's name should be on the document. If a policy has not been reviewed in eighteen months, an inspector will assume it is not actively maintained — and the rest of the document will be read with that assumption in mind.

Annual is the floor, not the ceiling. Some policies need triggered reviews regardless of the calendar:

• After legislation changes. When the Employment Rights Act, Mental Capacity Act guidance, the Care Act statutory guidance, or any CQC framework changes, the relevant policies must be updated within a reasonable window — not at the next annual cycle.
• After a serious incident. If a safeguarding concern, medication error, or significant complaint reveals a gap in the policy, that policy must be revised promptly. The revision should be tracked and dated, and inspectors will look for the linkage between the incident and the policy change.
• After key personnel changes. If your registered manager, designated safeguarding lead, nominated individual, or any other named role changes, every policy referencing that role must be updated within days.
• After a service expansion. If you take on new regulated activities, expand your geographic area, or change your client group, your Statement of Purpose and related policies must be updated to reflect the new scope.

The registered manager is accountable for sign-off. Whether the policy is drafted by an external provider, a consultant, or internal staff, the registered manager (or the nominated individual where appropriate) must read it, agree it, sign it, and date it before it becomes operational. A policy with no signed sign-off page tells an inspector that nobody is taking ownership of the document.

What Happens if a Policy is Missing at Inspection

A missing policy is not always fatal — it depends which one. If you cannot produce a safeguarding policy on request, that is a regulatory breach under Regulation 13 and a critical issue under Safe. If you cannot produce a medication policy, that is a breach under Regulation 12. Either of these can lead directly to enforcement action. CQC may issue a warning notice, impose conditions on your registration, or — in serious cases — initiate suspension or cancellation proceedings.

For less central policies, the consequences are softer but still real. A missing or out-of-date policy on supervision, complaints, business continuity, or duty of candour will be cited as a finding. Multiple findings across the same key question accumulate into a downgraded rating for that question, which then feeds into your overall rating.

The practical sequence at inspection is usually predictable. The inspector asks for a policy. You either produce it immediately or admit it does not exist. If it does not exist, the inspector documents the finding, asks how you have been operating without it, and probes whether the underlying activity has been carried out at all. A missing complaints policy combined with a complaints log full of unresolved entries is a more serious finding than a missing complaints policy with a tidy log — but neither is comfortable. For more on what inspectors look for and how to prepare, see our CQC inspection preparation checklist.

The fastest way to avoid this situation is a single-page policy register: every policy your service holds, the date it was last reviewed, the date it is next due, and who signed it off. The register itself is good evidence under Well-Led. Its absence is itself a flag.

Related articles