CQC PSO 064 Financial Assessment of Adult Social Care Providers

THE REQUIREMENT Primarily the contractor is required to provide resources to carry out an assessment of the forty four ASC providers’ company finance, accounts and debt structures. Core capabilities required include the ability to provide: • Interpretation of information from providers, based on information provided to CQC from the providers, via a financial submission template covering standard financial indicators; . • timely, detailed financial advice and analysis to service risk assessment judgments; • An opinion on where each Corporate Provider sits on the operating model; • Assessment of likely or imminent failure. This is a highly specialised area and the skill set and experience required for the task is a key requirement to meet the overall objective of assuring CQC that the financial and business aspects of companies providing care services are viable. Commercial expertise and/or a detailed banking or restructuring background is a key asset in enabling this role, as highly specialised skills and knowledge is required of complex company accounting, lending, refinancing, debt and repayment strategies. CQC has published guidance for providers. The guidance is available on the CQC website The tasks and activties set out below support the delivery of the MO operating model. The tasks: There are 3 key blocks of activity being sought Activity One: • Provide named contacts for each the 44 providers to have single point of contact on financial risk assessment • Resolve any queries from providers about how to complete the financial submission template, for example at what level of the Group information should be provided.

In delivering these activities, please note that CQC has developed a Financial Submission template. In Appendix C is a summary of this template, which lists the indicators which are included. CQC has a secure portal for information exchange between CQC and the providers and this will be needed to be used as the primary storage of information

Activity Two: Confirm that the following have not changed o Group structure, including the structure of its registered providers registered with CQC o Shareholders o Lenders o Properties

This task may be completed by analysing publicly available information; information provided by the provider and may need to be supplemented with discussions with the providers in question.

Activity Three • Each quarters performance can be assessed against recent performance and anticipated future performance from the business plan

• When the data submissions are received (6 weeks after quarter end), carry out analysis of potential financial risk. The assessment should as a minimum cover: • Is trading improving or deteriorating? • Is there too much debt? • Can they afford to pay their debts? • Is the annual budget deliverable? • Where are they on the operating model?