What is the Care Quality Commission?
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and social care in England. Its job is to make sure that health and care services provide people with safe, effective, compassionate and high-quality care.
Any organisation providing personal care in someone's home — including helping with washing, dressing, medication, or mobility — is legally required to be registered with the CQC. Operating without CQC registration is a criminal offence.
🛡️The CQC does not regulate individual carers. It regulates the agency (the "provider") that employs them. The agency is responsible for ensuring all their staff are properly trained, DBS-checked, and supervised.
What do CQC ratings mean?
The CQC inspects registered care providers and assigns one of four ratings. Inspections look at whether services are safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led.
Outstanding
The service is performing exceptionally well. This is the highest rating the CQC awards.
Good
The service is performing well and meeting expectations. The majority of CQC-rated services hold this rating.
Requires improvement
The service is not performing well enough. The provider must make improvements or face further regulatory action.
Inadequate
The service is performing badly and the CQC may be taking action against the person or organisation providing it.
⚠️Agencies rated "Inadequate" are never shown on CareAH. We display all CQC-registered agencies with a rating of Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement, or Not Yet Rated. Inadequate-rated agencies are filtered out automatically at every weekly sync.
How CareAH enforces CQC compliance
01
Every agency comes directly from the CQC register
We don't wait for agencies to sign up. All 15,600+ agencies on CareAH are sourced directly from the Care Quality Commission's official public register. If an agency is not CQC-registered, it does not exist on our platform. No exceptions.
02
CQC data refreshed weekly
We sync directly with the CQC's official API every week. New registrations are added automatically. Agencies whose registration lapses or is cancelled are removed from public results at the next sync. Families always see current, verified data.
03
CQC rating shown on every profile
Every agency profile displays the full CQC rating — Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement, or Not Yet Rated. Ratings are sourced directly from CQC inspection data. Agencies rated Inadequate are never shown to families.
04
Agencies claim — they don't join
CQC-registered agencies already have a profile on CareAH. They can claim and enhance their profile to add availability, pricing and services. But their presence on the platform is determined solely by their CQC registration status — not by whether they have signed up.
The CQC's five key questions
When the CQC inspects a care provider, they ask five fundamental questions:
🔒 Is it safe?
Are people protected from abuse and avoidable harm?
✅ Is it effective?
Does the care, treatment and support achieve good outcomes and help people maintain quality of life?
💛 Is it caring?
Do staff involve and treat people with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect?
🔄 Is it responsive?
Are services organised so they meet people's needs?
🏆 Is it well-led?
Does leadership and management ensure high-quality, person-centred care?
Check any agency on the CQC register
The CQC maintains a public register of all registered care providers. You can search any agency by name, location or provider ID to see their current registration status, rating, and full inspection reports — all freely available.
🔍 Search the CQC register →
Reporting concerns about a care provider
If you have concerns about the quality or safety of care being provided — by an agency on CareAH or any other provider — you have the right to report this directly to the CQC.
You can also contact CareAH directly via our contact form. Where we receive credible reports of non-compliance, we will suspend the agency's profile pending review, regardless of their current CQC rating.
📢 Give feedback to the CQC →