Hi Senga, can you tell me about the Duty of Candour and what does this mean for my service?

Answered by Senga Currie

Hi D,

The Duty of Candour affects all health, social work and care services except childminders. It means that services must take specific steps to carry out their duty of candour when a serious adverse event happens.

Services will need to let the people affected know, offer to meet with them, and apologise. This is an important part of being open with people who experience care, and also learning from things that go wrong.

Starting from April 2019, care services and social work services must, by law, produce a short annual report showing the learning from their duty of candour incidents that year, publish it, and notify the Care Inspectorate that it has been published. That means the first annual report services produce will cover the period April 2018 to April 2019. An online learning module is available now. This explains more about the duty of candour and helps services and your staff understand their obligations. I strongly encourage services and their staff to undertake this module.

Best wishes.

Senga