What a provider must do

Who is this page for?

For anyone on either side of the arrangement. The person receiving support and the family around them want to know what the organisation arriving at the door owes them. The people who do the work want to know what the organisation they work for is required to do. The two questions have one answer, and it is written down. The section this page belongs to opens in working in care; this page is the one that takes the duties in order.

It reads from two kinds of source. The first is the text of the Care Act 2014, in the revised version published on legislation.gov.uk. The second is the public record of the Care Quality Commission, the body that registers much of the sector. Both carry dates, and both are printed here beside the sentence they support.

What does the law require, and of whom?

The duties in the Act run to the council. Where an adult's needs have been assessed and found eligible, section 18 of the Care Act 2014, titled Duty to meet needs for care and support, puts the council under a duty to meet them. Section 19, titled Power to meet needs, allows a council to meet needs that fall outside that duty. How a need is met is a separate question, carried by section 8, titled How to meet needs.

Care Act 2014, sections 8, 18 and 19, section titles. Version Latest available (Revised) as at 2 September 2026, legislation.gov.uk, read on 3 September 2026.

What reaches a support organisation is what has been arranged under those provisions. Sometimes the arrangement was made by a council. Sometimes it was made by the person, with money paid across to them to arrange their own support. Either way the daily work sits at the delivery end of a decision taken somewhere else, and knowing which decision it is changes what can be asked, and of whom.

The Act is not the only text in the frame. Councils in England work from the Care and support statutory guidance, first published on 29 July 2016 and last updated on 22 July 2025. It is the document that explains how the duties are meant to be carried out, and its update date is worth writing down, because advice given before an update may describe a version that has since moved.

Care and support statutory guidance, Department of Health and Social Care, first published 29 July 2016, last updated 22 July 2025. GOV.UK, read on 3 September 2026.

Two steps of the journey bracket the daily work. Step 9 is where the duty to meet needs arises, and step 14 is where something has gone wrong. Both sit in the route map, set in the full sequence of fourteen with the section that carries each one.

What happens when something goes wrong?

The Act keeps safeguarding with the council. Section 42 is titled Enquiry by local authority and section 68 is titled Safeguarding enquiries and reviews. Those titles name the body the enquiry belongs to, and this page prints them and stops there, because what each section provides is a reading that has not been done for these pages yet.

Care Act 2014, sections 42 and 68, section titles. Version Latest available (Revised) as at 2 September 2026, legislation.gov.uk, read on 3 September 2026.

What an organisation contributes to an enquiry is shaped by the procedures it keeps and by the records written before anything went wrong. The step available to anyone, inside the organisation or outside it, costs nothing and is the same in every council: ask which section a decision was taken under, ask for a copy of the complaints procedure, and put dates in the complaint.

What does registration cover?

Much of the sector is registered. The Care Quality Commission keeps the register of the organisations and the services that provide regulated activity, and registration attaches to the regulated activity an organisation provides rather than to the organisation in general. Which activities are regulated is the regulator's to define, and the page it keeps for people who want to use its data is where that perimeter is described.

The register is published. The Care Directory comes out weekly, and the directories with filters and with ratings come out monthly. The versions listed when those pages were read were 2 September 2026 for the weekly file and 4 August 2026 for the monthly pair. They list services and what has been recorded against them, and this handbook reads them for what they count rather than for any single entry in them.

Care Quality Commission, Using CQC data: Care Directory published weekly, version 2 September 2026, and directories with filters and with ratings published monthly, version 4 August 2026. cqc.org.uk, read on 3 September 2026.

Most people arrive at this page carrying a comparison between two forms of housing with support. One is a registered home, where the accommodation and the support come as one arrangement. The other is a tenancy of your own, with support bought separately. The handbook takes them apart term by term: residential care homes on one side, and supported living explained on the other. Registration is only the first of the differences between them.

What does a rating mean?

The directory published with ratings carries, beside each entry, the judgement the regulator has recorded against that service. The four ratings make up a scale, and the band an entry sits in is printed with it. Read as a starting point, a band does useful work: it tells you which questions to ask next, and how long it has been since the service was last recorded against the scale. Read as an account of what a particular person experiences there, it does not, because a rating is recorded against a service and a person's experience is recorded nowhere.

The useful order is the one that keeps the band in its place: read it, then ask the organisation what has changed since it was recorded, then ask what it was before. Nothing is counted from those files on this site yet, and the dated notes register says when the files move, with the date each one was read.

Who counts the workforce?

Skills for Care, once a year, in The state of the adult social care sector and workforce in England. The edition consulted for these pages was published on 15 October 2025, on 2024/25 data. Its figures sit in the report and in the visualisation tool published beside it, and that is where the size of the workforce, the number of posts filled and unfilled, and the qualifications of the people doing the work are counted.

Skills for Care, The state of the adult social care sector and workforce in England, published 15 October 2025, on 2024/25 data. skillsforcare.org.uk, read on 3 September 2026.

One figure from that report is worth more than a page of adjectives, and this handbook prints one when the report itself has been read. Until then the honest description of the sector is the structural one: its people are employed either by organisations, or, in the direct payments arrangement, by the person whose support they provide. The second arrangement raises the questions of an employer without the distance of an organisation, and handling the money is where those questions are taken up.

Sources read for this page

• Care Act 2014, revised text on legislation.gov.uk, version Latest available (Revised) as at 2 September 2026
• Care Quality Commission, Using CQC data
• Skills for Care, The state of the adult social care sector and workforce in England, published 15 October 2025
• Care and support statutory guidance, Department of Health and Social Care, updated 22 July 2025

Each source above was opened on 3 September 2026. Where a page here prints a section number or a figure, the source line beside it names the version that number was read from.