Safe · KLOE 6
Safe staffing
Are there are enough qualified, skilled and experienced staff to keep people safe and meet their needs, with strategies to manage demand and capacity safely?
CQC wording, mental health care draft, pages 18 to 20.
Draft, not the current assessment framework
CQC's mental health care draft, published March 2026. The current quality statements remain in use.
CQC draft scope
What this proposed KLOE covers
Scope of this key line of enquiry and topic areas include:
- Workforce capacity and capability (including vacancies, turnover and sickness)
- Safe recruitment (including DBS)
- Staffing levels and skills mix
- Skills, qualifications and revalidation
- Learning, development, performance and competency
- Support, appraisal and supervision
- Agency staff, volunteers and unpaid carers
- Mental health specific acuity tools
- Mental health specific training including use of force, restraint, life support and Mental Health Act
- Learning disability and autism training
- Training co-produced/co delivered with people with lived experience
- Appropriate multi-disciplinary team composition
How would this apply to your service?
The draft applies one framework across mental health care, but useful evidence depends on your service and people.
Source: CQC, Mental health care assessment framework, draft, 19 March 2026, pages 18 to 20. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
CQC draft rating characteristics
How the draft describes each rating
These are CQC's draft characteristics. CQC says rating characteristics guide judgements, they are not a mechanical checklist.
Outstanding
- The service demonstrates exemplary foresight in workforce planning, using demand and capacity modelling, population trends and escalation data to anticipate pressures well ahead of need. Staffing levels and skill mix are optimised continuously using real-time intelligence, mental-health-specific acuity tools and feedback from people with lived experience, ensuring safe, proactive and personalised care even during crisis or system pressure.
- Recruitment and development are exceptional. Values-based recruitment ensures staff have outstanding competence, cultural humility and trauma-informed practice skills, with lived experience meaningfully shaping decisions. Staff are proactively supported to develop advanced specialist skills and are empowered to lead improvement, share learning and influence practice across the system.
- Support, supervision and training are exemplary: reflective, restorative, psychologically safe and embedded across all roles. Leaders prioritise wellbeing, emotional safety and professional growth. Training in the use of force is trauma-informed, co-produced and co-delivered with people who have experienced restrictive interventions, contributing to sector-leading reductions in restraint.
Good
- There are appropriate staffing levels and skill mix to meet the needs of people. Where required staffing levels cannot be met, leaders support staff who deliver care to develop short-term adaptations to make sure people continue to receive consistently safe, good quality care that meets their needs.
- The service takes action to protect staff from fatigue, and leaders understand its impact on the safety of those who use services.
- There are rigorous and safe recruitment practices to make sure that all staff, including agency staff and volunteers, are suitably skilled, experienced qualified and competent and able to carry out their role.
- Staff receive training appropriate and relevant to their role and the patient group they serve. Staff at all levels have opportunities to learn and develop their practice.
- Representatives for people and those close to them are involved in delivering and developing relevant staff training.
- Staff receive the support they need to deliver safe care. This includes supervision, appraisal, development and, where needed, professional revalidation. Poor performance is managed appropriately.
- People’s support systems, including volunteers, carers and families, are offered appropriate training to support their caring responsibilities, such as manual handling and medicines management.
- Training in the use of force is certified as complying with the Restraint Reduction Network’s training standards. The training needs analysis is updated annually.
- Recruitment, disciplinary and capability processes are fair and are reviewed to ensure there is no disadvantage based on protected equality characteristics.
- Staff at all levels have opportunities to learn.
- The provider has systems for investigating any allegations (both in work and external to work) against people in positions of trust (PiPOT) who it employs and takes actions to ensure there is no risk to people using the service.
Requires improvement
- There are periods of understaffing or inappropriate skill mix, which are not addressed quickly. Agency, bank and locum staff are not always used in a way that ensures people’s safety is protected at all times.
- Inconsistent recruitment practices result in staff not always being suitably skilled, experienced or competent to carry out their role.
- There is limited understanding about how staff fatigue can affect patient safety.
- Staff do not always receive appropriate training or training is not delivered soon enough. There are few opportunities for staff to learn and develop.
- Systems to ensure staff receive adequate supervision, appraisal and development are deficient. Poor performance is not always appropriately managed.
- Training in the use of force is certified as complying with the Restraint Reduction Network’s training standards, but the training needs analysis isn’t updated annually.
- People’s care is adversely affected because of regular changes in staff.
Inadequate
- Substantial staff shortages and inappropriate skill mix are common. Agency, bank and locum staff are not used to make sure people continue to receive safe care. Staff fatigue is not considered.
- Recruitment practices are unsafe. Staff are not suitably skilled, experienced, qualified or competent to carry out their role.
- Staff do not receive appropriate training.
- Staff are not given opportunities to develop, and they do not receive supervision or appraisal. Poor performance is ignored.
- Training in the use of force is not compliant with the Restraint Reduction Network’s training standards.
- People are at risk of harm because of regular changes in staff.
Want to know how your service would fare?
Book a mock inspection run against the draft KLOEs, or call 020 8090 5346 to speak to one of our experts.