The Domiciliary Care Agencies (Wales) Regulations 2004

Explanatory Note

(This note is not part of the Regulations)

These Regulations are made under the Care Standards Act 2000 (“the Act”) and apply in relation to domiciliary care agencies (“agencies”) in Wales. Parts I and II of the Act provide for the National Assembly for Wales, in relation to Wales, to register persons carrying on or managing agencies and to inspect agency premises. Part II also provides that a person who carries on or manages an agency without being registered in respect of it commits an offence. The Act also provides for the National Assembly to make regulations governing the conduct of agencies in relation to Wales. Under section 13 of the Act the National Assembly must be satisfied that the regulations are being and will continue to be complied with if it is to grant an application for registration.

Regulation 3 excludes certain undertakings from the definition of domiciliary care agency in section 4 of the Act. These include undertakings which are carried on solely by an individual who is not employed by an organisation to carry it on, who does not employ anyone else for the purposes of the undertaking and who arranges personal care to fewer than four service users. Regulations 4 to 6 are about the agency’s statement of purpose and service users' guide. Each agency must have a statement of purpose and a service users' guide to the agency (regulations 4 and 5). The registered person must have regard to the statement of purpose in making staffing arrangements for the agency (regulation 16), and ensure that the agency premises are suitable for the purpose of achieving the aims and objectives set out in the statement of purpose (regulation 24). The statement and the guide are to be kept under review and revised if necessary (regulation 6).

Regulation 7 requires the fact of an agency’s registration to be noted on its correspondence.

PART II of the Regulations makes provision about the fitness of persons carrying on or managing the agency, and requires satisfactory information as to the matters set out in schedule 2 to be available in relation to these persons. Where the person carrying on an agency is an organisation, it must nominate a responsible person in respect of whom this information must be available (regulation 8). Regulation 9 provides that a manager must be appointed for an agency in certain circumstances, and regulation 11 imposes general requirements in relation to the conduct of an agency and the need for registered persons to undertake appropriate training.

Part III of the Regulations makes provision about the conduct of agencies, in particular as to the arrangements for the provision of personal care (regulation 14), the fitness of workers (regulation 15), staffing requirements (regulation 16), provision of a handbook and code of conduct to staff and information to service users (regulations 17 and 18), identification to be produced by workers (regulation 19), record keeping (regulation 20), complaints procedures of the agency (regulation 21), the seeking of staff views about the conduct of an agency (regulation 22) and the review of the operations of an agency (regulation 23).

PART III also makes provision about the fitness of agency premises (regulation 24), imposes requirements as to the financial position of agencies (regulation 25) and requires notice to be given to the National Assembly of specified events relating to an agency (regulations 26 to 29).

Part IV of the Regulations deals with miscellaneous matters such as the discharge of obligations under the Regulations where an agency has more than one registered person (regulation 30), offences under the Regulations (regulation 31), the specification of appropriate offices of the National Assembly for the purposes of obligations under the Regulations to give notice (regulation 32), amendments to the Statutory Instruments about the making of applications for registration and the payment of registration fees to take account of the application of the Act to agencies (regulations 33 and 34), and also makes transitional provision (regulation 35).