Perspectives from Bill Watson
Insights
Weekly perspectives on the issues shaping social care.
Latest insights
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State of Care 2025/26: The finding the headlines missed is the one you can fix
CQC says the care market is being reshaped “by accident rather than design”. Insequa’s Bill Watson argues that most of that is beyond any provider, but the report’s weakest finding, well-led, is the one thing you can still design.
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Oliver McGowan Training has been the law for four years. Why are some providers still not doing it?
Oliver McGowan Training has been a legal requirement since 2022, yet CQC says some providers still are not doing it. Bill Watson on why it matters, and why Part 1 costs nothing.
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A named inspector is good news. Now make sure you have something to say to them.
CQC is giving every provider a named inspector. Bill Watson welcomes the move, but warns that a relationship is not leniency and that the real test is whether you have evidence ready all year round.
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More Time for People: What AI Should Mean for Social Care
Bill Watson on the new Care England research, what AI should give back to care staff, and what providers and regulators need to do to adopt it well.
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The National Care Service is back. What should providers make of it?
Having worked in the Health and Social Care sector for 40 years, I have worked alongside social care providers long enough to have heard a National Care Service promised before. Andy Burnham first put the idea in a green paper in 2009, when he was Health Secretary. Seventeen years on, as Prime Minister, he stood…
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Somebody is finally asking. Let us not be quiet.
This one is time sensitive, so I will come straight to it. On 29th July, Baroness Casey launched the Big Conversation on Care, part of her Independent Commission on Adult Social Care. It asks the public what a future National Care Service should be: who it should support, what families can reasonably be expected to…
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