Responsive · KLOE 4

Equity in experience

Does the service tailor people's care, treatment and support effectively, to ensure equity in experience?

CQC wording, primary care and community services draft V6.0, pages 42 to 43.

Draft, not the current assessment framework

CQC's primary care and community services draft V6.0, 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:

The draft applies one framework across primary care and community services, but useful evidence depends on your service and people.

Source: CQC, Primary care and community services assessment framework, draft V6.0, 19 March 2026, pages 42 to 43. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

CQC draft rating characteristics

These are CQC's draft characteristics. CQC says rating characteristics guide judgements, they are not a mechanical checklist.

The service embodies a supportive environment. Staff communicate in a clear and inclusive way, people feel their diversity is valued, and they are empowered to give their views and understand their rights.
The service takes purposeful steps to listen and respond to people’s experiences of discrimination and inequality, and they can show evidence of improvements in people’s experience of care.
Staff are proactive in identifying and addressing discrimination and inequality that could disadvantage different groups of people using their services. They foster a psychologically safe culture where these issues are addressed transparently.
Staff work proactively to enable equally good experiences and achieve equity by recognising barriers that prevent this, acting on information, allocating resources to improve outcomes, and embedding continuous learning and innovation.
People’s needs are identified and recorded in a way that is inclusive, continuously reviewed and shared appropriately.

Staff empower people to understand their rights, including those related to equality and their human rights. People feel that their experiences of discrimination and inequality are listened to and acted on to improve their experience and outcome of care.
Staff are aware of discrimination and inequality that could disadvantage different groups of people using their services, whether caused by individuals, the wider society, organisational processes or culture.
The service complies with legal equality and human rights requirements, including avoiding discrimination, having regard to the needs of people with different protected equality characteristics and making reasonable adjustments to support equity in experience and outcomes.
People can expect information to be tailored to their needs, for example through hybrid care, reasonable adjustments, accessible formats, interpretation and translation, and support to use digital services. These needs are identified, recorded and shared, and are continuously met and reviewed to support their care and treatment.

People do not always understand their rights, including those related to equality and human rights. They do not always report feeling that their experiences of discrimination and inequality are listened to or acted on, or that the service has made changes to improve their experience and outcomes.
Staff are not consistently aware of discrimination and inequality that could disadvantage groups of people using their services.
Staff are reactive in their work to achieve equity in people’s experiences. They may act on information to address experiences and outcomes for an individual person, but there is no systematic approach to apply this to all people or specific groups of people.
The service does not comply with all legal equality and human rights requirements. It is aware of where it is not compliant and is acting to address these areas.
People do not consistently receive information tailored to their needs. These needs are not always identified, recorded, shared and reviewed, and as a result may not be consistently met.

People do not understand their rights, including those related to equality and human rights. Their experiences of discrimination and inequality are not listened to or acted on. Positive experiences and outcomes of care are declining.
Staff are not aware of discrimination and inequality that could disadvantage groups of people using their services, and this is not a focus in planning and delivering the service.
Staff do not recognise when people’s experiences and outcomes are not equal. They do not identify or address barriers to equity, or act on information they receive to improve people’s experiences of care.
The service does not comply with all legal equality and human rights requirements. It is not aware of where it is not compliant.
People do not receive information tailored to their needs. These needs are not identified, recorded, shared, or reviewed.

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