Duty of Candour

           From The 1^st of April 2018 the Scottish Government introduced regulations and guidance on the Duty of                  Candour process for all care & social work services.           

           What is Duty of Candour?           

           We share a common purpose and that is the provision of high quality care to ensure the best possible outcomes for             people using health and care services. We know that we try hard to deliver exceptional care daily, but sometimes               things do go wrong and its how we deal with these things that’s important. How we respond, whether to people                 who use our service, carers, family members or to each other, can make a huge difference to peoples experience                 of  health & social care services.

           Every Care company that supplies care to an individual must be open and honest with its service user’s when                     something goes wrong with their care supplied. It means that services must take specific steps to carry out their                 duty of candour when a serious adverse event happens. They will need to let the people affected know, offer to                   meet with them, and apologise. This is an important part of being open with people who experience care, and,                   learning from things that go wrong.

           The purpose of the new duty of candour provisions is to support the implementation of consistent responses                       across health and social care providers when there has been an unexpected event or incident that has resulted in                 death or harm, that is not related to the course of the condition for which the person is receiving care.

           Key principles:

          If something has gone wrong with your care package, be it unexpected or unintentional, people naturally want to

            know what happened. When this happens, people want to be told honestly what happened, what will be done in                response, and to know how actions will be taken to stop this happening again to someone else in the future.

           IKL Care will endeavour to be as honest in all areas as we possibly can to ensure we supply the best                        possible care available for all our service users.

           There is a need to improve the focus on support, training, and transparent disclosure of learning to influence                     improvement and support the development of a learning culture across services.

• We will meet with you (the service user) or with your representative and/or social worker and discuss any issues or problems you may have with your care package face to face.

Candour is one of a series of actions that should form part of organisational focus and commitment to learning and improvement.

• We will learn from any issues that are raised and ensure that our staff & management learn from these instances whilst sharing knowledge as best practice. 

Transparency, especially following unexpected harm incidents is increasingly considered necessary to improving the quality of    health and social care.

• We will disclose any information required by you (the service user) if requested regarding any issue you have raised.
• We will be open and honest.

Being candid promotes accountability for safer systems, better engages staff in improvement efforts, and engenders greater trust in patients and service users.

• We will put in place any solutions/recommendations which will improve our service to you, setting out a time line for the implementation of any changes.
• We will apologise for any wrong doing on our part. 

Further details on Duty of Candour can be found on the Care Inspectorates website at the following link:

http://www.careinspectorate.com/index.php/duty-of-candour