Free resources for home care owners.
Tools, checklists and guides built from inside a working CQC-rated Good domiciliary care service in England. Useful enough to be worth your email. Narrow enough not to substitute for the full operating method.
If you’re thinking about starting a service.
Three resources for aspiring owners. Decide whether to start, structure your CQC application correctly, and budget realistically before you spend a penny.
Should you start a home care business?
Seven honest questions to help you decide before you spend a penny on registration, software, or staffing. Capital, time, accountability, motivation. Score yourself in 15 minutes.
20 CQC Fit Person interview questions.
The questions inspectors ask most, with the answers Shazad gives in his own voice. Practitioner answers, not rehearsed scripts. Read his, then write yours.
Real startup costs, England 2026.
Stage-by-stage cost breakdown with real numbers. Pre-application, application, first month operating, recurring monthly. Lean vs. Standard totals.
If you’re running a service day to day.
Tools for owners and registered managers operating an active service. The audits, checklists and frameworks we use inside our own service.
Audit what you already have
Score what you already hold the way an inspector reads it. Built to be re-run next quarter, not filed away.
Care Plan Quality Score Sheet.
Twenty checkpoints across five categories. Score your care plans against what inspectors actually look for. Designed to be re-used weekly.
The MAR audit, on one page.
What to check daily, weekly, and monthly to keep your medication records safe and inspection-ready. Built around CQC Regulation 12 and NICE NG67.
Hiring a carer: what gets sent, and when.
Schedule 3 in plain English, the three ID documents you have to see in person, the three things you cannot speed up, and the four that stop a start date full stop. With a one page checklist sorted by what it is rather than by stage.
The staff file checklist, done properly.
The 14 documents a CQC-ready staff file needs, and what to check inside each one. Use it to hire safely or audit the files you already hold. Built around Regulation 19 and Schedule 3.
The client file checklist, done properly.
The 12 documents a CQC-ready service user file needs, and what to check inside each one. Use it to set up a new client or audit the files you already hold. Built around Regulations 9, 11 and 12.
Client and staff feedback pack.
Ready-to-send annual surveys for clients, families and staff, a question bank to build your own, and a one-page guide on turning the answers into inspection-ready evidence. Built around Regulation 17: seek and act on feedback.
The care plan rewrite.
Twelve before and afters across all five parts of a care plan. What people write, why it gets marked down, and the version a carer who has never met the person could actually work from. Plus the swap list: twelve phrases that fail every time.
Get ready for inspection
What CQC will ask, what they read before they meet you, and what you need to be able to hand over.
What you have to tell CQC, and when.
The only part of the regulations where CQC can prosecute without a warning notice first. The full list of notifiable events, the deadlines, the two categories almost nobody notifies, and six judgement calls worked through.
What good compliance actually looks like.
Doing it and proving it are two different jobs. The full client record cycle from initial assessment to a carer signing on their phone, why so much compliance sits outstanding, and a ten minute check you can run on three clients this week.
CQC Inspection Readiness Checklist.
Forty-point checklist mapped to the Single Assessment Framework. The version we use inside our own service to walk into every inspection.
The 24 KLOEs, and the evidence for each.
CQC's new draft framework turns the 34 Quality Statements into 24 Key Lines of Enquiry, written as the questions an inspector will ask. All 24 mapped in CQC's own words, with the evidence to have ready for each, and the six where most home care services fall down.
The statement of purpose.
How to write one that actually describes your service, and how to keep it that way. The seven Schedule 3 blocks, how to write aims you can evidence, the consistency check against your policies and business plan, the ten triggers to update it, and a printable review record.
Run the week
The routines, meetings and decisions that keep a service on track between inspections.
Your own business email.
Why a Gmail address costs you trust, and how to get your own domain and email, one step at a time. Stopping your emails going to junk, shared addresses like info@ and jobs@, and a signature and out-of-office you can copy.
Supervisions that actually happen.
How to run supervisions every three months, what to ask before and in the meeting, why every action needs a name and a date, and how both people sign. With the supervision tracker that shows who is due and who is late.
Every call on record.
Why recordings are not a call log, and how to log every call so nothing is lost between shifts. The one rule that makes a log worth keeping, nights and weekend handover, and the weekly call log spreadsheet to go with it.
The compliance rhythm.
What to check daily, weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly and yearly, and the things that can't wait for a review date. The cadence that keeps you inspection-ready all year, instead of a fortnight of panic when an inspector calls.
Observed practice.
Supervision, spot checks and competency assessments are three different instruments doing three different jobs. How to separate them, what to actually watch on a visit, how to close the loop afterwards, and an annual cadence you can run. Built around Regulation 18.
Keeping your staff.
Retention gets treated as a pay problem and it almost never is. Six signals somebody has already decided to leave, the six things that actually keep people, and a one-page guide written to your carers that you can print or forward.
Staff meetings that count.
How to run, and record, a team meeting that stands up to inspection. The three meetings you actually need, the 13-point standing agenda, how to minute it so it counts as Well-led evidence, and the five mistakes that make a good meeting count for nothing.
Safeguarding: what to do, in order.
A two-sided decision aid for the moment a concern is raised. Page one for care workers, page two for managers. Built around the Care Act 2014.
Price it and win work
The commercial side. What a package actually costs to deliver, and how to write a tender that scores.
Social media that actually brought us referrals.
Five referrals in six weeks from a handful of posts a month. Exactly what we post, why nothing is curated, and the half nobody else writes: what you can and cannot put online when your workplace is somebody else’s living room.
The Domiciliary Care Delivery Calculator.
Plug in your charge rate, team, and fixed costs. The calculator gives you the minimum weekly delivery target your service needs to cover the lot.
How to complete a care tender.
The five things every local authority tender is really asking, what to have ready before you bid, what to look out for, and the habits that lift your score.
Want the full operating method?
Home Care Built to Scale is the complete programme behind these resources. 70+ video lessons, 260+ policies, 250+ templates, three 1:1 calls with Shazad. Lifetime access. Day-one delivery.
See what’s inside the course →The home of Home Care Built to Scale. The programme for domiciliary care owners and registered managers operating in England, under CQC.