Look Who’s Talking Be Outstanding: Raising Standards in the Care Quality Sector Samuel Barrington www.theciagroup.co.uk With over 20 years in the care sector, Samuel has a strong passion to support care providers across the adult social care sector. Starting his career as a care assistant in his hometown of Scarborough, Samuel soon moved on to nursing and care management, which included board level care quality Director roles across the country. His mission now is to support care providers to deliver outstanding care to all individuals, every single day.
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Care Improvement Associates Ltd was founded in April 2017 after my role as Head of Operations for a well-established care quality consultancy based in Yorkshire was made redundant. I was in the process of buying our first family home when the bank contacted us to say they could no longer offer us a mortgage due to the change in circumstances. This motivated me and I was driven to set up my own care quality consultancy, Care Improvement Associates (CIA), with the aim of supporting care providers to not just aim for Care Quality Commission (CQC) compliance, but to aim for outstanding care quality.
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are Improvement Associates is a national network of over 40 care quality consultants, which includes current CQC inspectors, specialist advisers, former inspectors, experienced managers and directors, who all share the aim of supporting care providers to provide outstanding care quality. The biggest asset to a consultancy, enabling us to provide high-quality services to our clients, has been ensuring we recruit only the best consultants for our CIA national network. From start-ups to leading providers, CIA offers a tailored solution, supporting you to deliver high-quality care and aim for the CQC rating of ‘Outstanding’. I began my career as a care assistant, before becoming a
nurse, a manager, a Director, and then a consultant. In addition, I had supported my own father at the end of his life, so I felt I could draw on this first-hand experience of being a family member of a ‘cared for person’ in a residential care home setting at the end of life, to support providers to aim higher. Setting up a company in the care quality consultancy sector has been one of the most challenging, but also most rewarding, choices I have ever made. Getting my head around the financial side of running a business, including tax, accounts and such like, was never my strong point, so I’ve experienced a steep learning curve in that respect. Based on this, my advice would always be to get a credible accountant from
