Caring is one of the five CQC key questions. It asks whether staff treat people with kindness, dignity and respect. It also asks whether care is personalised and reflects each person's own choices. Caring covers three Key Lines of Enquiry: kindness, compassion and dignity, person-centred care, and independence, choice and control. Inspectors look for genuine relationships and evidence that people direct their own care wherever possible.
Why Caring is harder to evidence than it sounds
Kindness is easy to describe and hard to evidence. Staff can be genuinely kind and a service can still receive a weak Caring rating. That happens when personalisation and independence are missing. A service can be warm and welcoming while still making decisions for people rather than with them. Even a well-run activities programme can be task-focused if nobody asks people what they actually want to do. Caring assesses both things at once. It looks at the tone of every interaction, and whether people actually hold choice and control over their own lives.
Caring is judged on whether people actually hold choice and control over their own care, day to day.
The three Caring KLOEs explained
1. Kindness, compassion and dignity
This KLOE asks whether people are treated with kindness, empathy, compassion and respect. That should hold in every interaction, not just the significant ones. It also asks whether their privacy and dignity are maintained. At Good level, staff communicate clearly and listen to understand each person's individual needs and preferences. They respond promptly to distress or discomfort. Privacy and confidentiality are consistently upheld, not just written into policy. We look at what that means in daily practice in our post on evidencing dignity beyond policy.
2. Person-centred care
This KLOE asks whether people receive personalised care that puts them at the centre of decisions. Regulation 9 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 covers this. It requires care to be personalised specifically to the individual, not delivered generically. At Good level, care is tailored to the individual rather than task-focused. People and those close to them are regularly involved in planning and updating their own care. Staff consider each person's cultural, social, spiritual and religious needs as a matter of course, not as an afterthought. Reasonable adjustments are made where needed. Technology is used to fit the person, not to make the service's job easier. Our post on what inspectors actually look for in person-centred care covers this KLOE in full.
3. Independence, choice and control
This KLOE asks whether people are supported to maintain their independence, relationships and choice over their care. It covers now and the future. At Good level, people have real choice and control over their own care and support. They are helped to maintain relationships with family, friends and their wider community. Visiting is limited only where genuinely necessary, and always in line with guidance. Adaptive equipment and technology are offered to support independence, not just risk management. People are supported to plan ahead, including decisions about the end of their life. Their preferences are recorded and respected, not just noted and filed.
What strong Caring evidence looks like in practice
Strong Caring evidence names the person, not just the task. A note that says "personal care completed" tells an inspector nothing about dignity. It says nothing about kindness, or how the person felt about it. A note that records how a person was involved tells a much fuller story. It should capture what they preferred, and how staff responded to their mood or comfort.
The same applies to independence and choice. A weekly activity log that only lists what happened misses the point. A log that records what a person chose is much stronger evidence for this key question. It should also show whether staff supported that choice, or steered them towards something easier to manage.
The CQC's 19 "I statements" are a useful check here. They describe care from the person's own point of view, not the service's. Our post on the CQC "I statements" explains how to use them when reviewing your own evidence. If your records only ever describe what staff did, that is a Caring gap worth closing. This applies whether you run a care home or another adult social care service.
How AlwaysReady structures Caring evidence
AlwaysReady maps directly to the CQC draft assessment framework for adult social care (2026), including all three Caring KLOEs. As part of our CQC Evidence Management approach, the People's Voice tool has all 19 "I statements" pre-loaded. You can record how residents and families actually experience your care. That is different from recording only what your policies say about it.
For Independence, choice and control, each person's preferences sit against their own profile. This includes end-of-life wishes where recorded. Nothing gets buried in a general policy file that nobody opens. AlwaysReady is Care Home Compliance Software built around CQC's own key questions. That keeps the evidence an inspector actually asks for close at hand, not scattered across separate systems.
References and regulatory sources
- Care Quality Commission (2026). Draft assessment framework for adult social care. Published 19 March 2026. Available at: cqc.org.uk
- Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, Regulation 9: Person-centred care.