Supported living policies and procedures

What CQC actually registers in supported living

This is the point most new providers get wrong. CQC does not register the accommodation. It registers the regulated activity of personal care — help with washing, dressing, eating, toileting and medication — delivered to people in their own homes. The housing side, the tenancy and the landlord relationship sit outside CQC's remit and are usually handled by a separate housing provider.

The practical consequence is that your policies must never read as though you control the property. A supported living service that writes house rules, restricts visitors, or sets curfews is describing a care home, and inspectors read it exactly that way. The person's tenancy gives them the same rights as any other tenant, including the right to have who they want in their home and to be asked before you enter.

Right Support, Right Care, Right Culture

Where the service supports autistic people or people with a learning disability, CQC applies its Right Support, Right Care, Right Culture guidance when deciding whether to register you and when judging the service afterwards. It is not a separate framework so much as a lens on the existing one, and it asks three things: does the model of care maximise choice, control and independence (right support); is care person-centred and does it respect human rights (right care); and does the culture, leadership and staff behaviour lead to good outcomes (right culture).

This matters for your policies because generic adult social care wording will not satisfy it. A restraint policy that reads as though restraint is routine, or a care planning policy that never mentions the person's own goals, is evidence against you rather than for you.

Which supported living policies and procedures do you need?

The core set below is what a CQC-registered supported living service is expected to hold. Everything in a domiciliary care library applies, plus the tenancy and rights-based material:

• Safeguarding adults, including how concerns are raised when the person lives independently and staff are not always present
• Mental Capacity Act, best interests decision-making and deprivation of liberty in a person's own home
• Positive behaviour support and reducing restrictive practice, including any use of restraint, seclusion or blanket restrictions
• Tenancy rights, entering a person's home, and separation of care from housing
• Person-centred care planning built around the person's goals, not the service's routines
• Medication management, including self-administration and where the person holds their own medicines
• Lone working and staff safety in a person's home
• Choice, control, sexuality and relationships
• Communication and accessible information, including total communication approaches
• Health inequalities, annual health checks and hospital passports
• Recruitment, induction and training, including learning disability and autism training
• Complaints, whistleblowing and speaking up
• Incident reporting, notifications to CQC, and duty of candour
• Governance, quality assurance and audit

The specialist policies people forget

A generic adult social care policy pack will leave gaps that are obvious to an inspector working in this sector. The material below is what separates a credible learning disability and autism service from a repurposed home care pack:

• STOMP and STAMP — stopping the over-medication of people with a learning disability, autism or both, and how you review psychotropic prescribing
• The Oliver McGowan mandatory training on learning disability and autism, and how you evidence completion
• LeDeR — the learning from lives and deaths review programme, and your part in it
• Reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act, and how they are recorded
• Sensory needs and environmental adjustments for autistic people
• Transition planning, including young people moving from children's services

Supported living, supported accommodation and care homes

These three are routinely confused, and the wrong policy set follows from the wrong label. Supported living means CQC-registered personal care delivered to adults who hold their own tenancy. Supported accommodation is an Ofsted-registered service for 16- and 17-year-olds under the Supported Accommodation (England) Regulations 2023, and it provides support rather than care. A care home is a single CQC-registered setting providing both accommodation and personal care together.

If you are unsure which you are, the question that usually settles it is whether the person could stay in the property if they stopped using your care service. If they could, because the tenancy is theirs, it is supported living. If they could not, it is a care home. For a fuller comparison of the regulators, see CQC vs Ofsted vs Care Inspectorate vs CIW, and for the 16–17 provision see supported accommodation policies.

Keeping the set current

Two things move faster in this sector than in most. The first is guidance on restrictive practice and mental capacity, where case law changes what lawful authorisation looks like. The second is training expectations, which have tightened considerably. A policy set written three years ago and never revisited will be visibly behind, and good governance under Regulation 17 makes keeping it current your responsibility rather than a nice-to-have.