Description

CQC define a closed culture as ‘a poor culture that can lead to harm, including human rights breaches such as abuse’. In these services, people are more likely to be at risk of deliberate or unintentional harm.

Any service that delivers care can have a closed culture. Care 4 Quality has developed an audit tool to help services identify and respond to areas of closed practice. We recommend that this audit is carried out on a quarterly basis or more frequently where concerns have been identified.

This audit will help to:

  • highlight the risk of closed cultures on people’s human rights and indicate examples of potential breaches of the fundamental standards where people’s human rights are at risk.
  • raise awareness of the signs to look for that may suggest a service is at risk of developing, or has developed, a closed culture.