2013 Your Care Rating Survey results are published

Results from the 2013 Your Care Rating Survey are now live and available to the public. Following development and testing of the survey in 2012, results on an individual care home basis have been published for the first time. Results are available from the Your Care Rating website, and are searchable by care home and location.

The report to accompany care home results, presenting findings from the survey overall, shows that resident feedback broadly paints an encouraging picture of life in care homes from the majority of homes which took part, with an average OPR score for participating homes of 871.

The survey obtained views from over 20,000 residents from 1,055 homes and were analysed to give each home an Overall Performance Rating (OPR) out of 1,000.

The purpose of Your Care Rating is to:

• Give care home residents a voice
• Promote continuous quality improvement in the care sector
• Provide an authoritative source of information for existing and prospective customers and other stakeholders

Your Care Rating is open to care homes across the UK. It is designed to be conducted in care homes that primarily serve older people (aged 65 or over), but is open to younger adults living in such care homes as well.

Martin Green, chief executive of Care England, said:

“The best people to comment on the quality of a service are the people who use it. Your Care Rating is becoming the most important resource available to people who are making decisions about moving into a care service because it gives the views of those who are already experiencing it. The care providers who have developed Your Care Rating have made a clear and public commitment to transparency and left the judgement of their quality to the people who use their services.”

Des Kelly, executive director of the National Care Forum, said:

“Your Care Rating provides objective, transparent and benchmarked data on what residents in care settings actually think about the services they receive – this is vital information for everyone leading and working in organisations providing care.”

• For more information go to www.yourcarerating.org 

Technical note

The 2013 survey was conducted across 32 providers, totalling 1,123 care homes and 60,478 registered places. The survey uses a postal self-completion methodology, with packs of questionnaires and freepost return envelopes sent to care homes. Fieldwork was conducted between September and November 2013. All responses to the survey are processed by Ipsos.

A total of 21,190 residents took part in the survey across 1,055 care homes. Results are based on valid responses (excluding blank responses to questions) and data is unweighted. Average results are based on the average of individual care home results. Benchmark figures are based on a total of 988 care homes where five or more responses were received and whose results were included in benchmark figures following validation.