As you no doubt know, certain providers of health and social care services have a legal duty to allow authorised LINks’ representatives to enter their services to see them at work.

To help ensure that these visits are carried out correctly, a code of conduct has been published. This briefing tells you more about the publication and how you can get hold of a copy.

Context

LINks aim help local people and groups shape local health and care services. This role involves finding out what the community thinks, looking into specific issues and working together with care professionals to make services better.

The Government believes that LINks would find this role hard to fulfil if they could not see for themselves how a service is run and talk to the people who use it. This is why the law enables LINks to enter and view specific services.

Nonetheless, with this ability come responsibilities that need to be understood and risks that need to be guarded against.

Safeguards

The Government has already put in place strong safeguards to protect patient’s rights, their safety and the smooth delivery of care.  For example, only an ‘authorised representative’ who has undergone a criminal records check can undertake visits and certain services are excluded, such as children’s social care services

Code of conduct

The code explains more about the legal duties and responsibilities but it also draws upon existing good practice from a range of organisations.

Those who have been involved include organisations with direct experience of conducting visits to health and social services premises for the purposes of assessing and monitoring the care delivered.

The code provides guidance and examples of best practice for both LINks and those being visited. The code explains how to prepare for a visit, provides advice for authorised representatives at the time of their visit (including appropriate behaviour and conduct) and covers what LINks should consider once a visit has finished.

Building a constructive relationship

The code also aims to make clear that the purpose of a visit by an authorised representative of a LINk is very different from the purpose of a visit by the care regulators or other statutory organisations.

LINks  have been given the ability to enter and view to help them carry out their  role  of  finding  out  what people want, reviewing the care provide locally and explaining to care management what the community thinks.

Carrying out such visits effectively is a far from straightforward exercise and is only one tool LINks can use to gather the intelligence they need.

The Department of Health strongly recommends the adoption of this code to help build an open and constructive relationship between services and their community.

We will keep the contents of the Code under review and provide updates as necessary.

To download the guide, please visit

www.nhscentreforinvolvement.nhs.uk/links

If you have any further queries or questions, please call: 024 7615 0705 or email info@links.nhs.uk