An inspector is at one of your client's care homes. They pull a staff file, and it belongs to a worker your agency supplied last month. The registered manager is now answering for your paperwork, in a conversation that feeds their rating. This is the moment that decides whether the home keeps booking you.
Here is the part agencies often miss. CQC does not inspect your staffing agency. It inspects the care provider you supply, and under Regulation 19 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, the provider must satisfy itself that the recruitment checks on every worker, including agency workers, are complete and satisfactory. The duty stays with the home. It reaches your desk through the home's audits and the terms of the booking.
We ran an education recruitment agency for seven years. The regulator is different in care, but the shape of the problem is the same one we lived: a client carrying a duty they can only discharge if your file holds up. This guide is about where that line sits, what CQC actually looks at, and what you should be able to hand over on request. For the mechanics of the reference itself, who counts as a referee and what it has to cover, we wrote a companion piece on care worker references.
What CQC actually checks
CQC assesses providers under its single assessment framework, built around five key questions and a set of quality statements. The one that bears on recruitment sits under "safe" and is called safe and effective staffing. It's the most commonly assessed statement in that group, so most inspections touch it.
The statement CQC works to reads: "We make sure there are enough qualified, skilled and experienced people, who receive effective support, supervision and development." Underneath it, the framework looks for "robust and safe recruitment practices to make sure that all staff, including agency staff and volunteers, are suitably experienced, competent and able to carry out their role."
Read that last line again, because it names you directly. Agency staff are held to the same standard as the home's own employees. There is no lighter-touch version for temporary workers. When an inspector tests that quality statement, the recruitment records behind your workers are part of the evidence they weigh.
Regulation 19 and where the duty sits
Regulation 19 is titled "fit and proper persons employed." It requires a provider to make sure anyone it employs is of good character, has the qualifications, competence, skills and experience the work needs, and is capable of doing the job by reason of their health, after reasonable adjustments. The provider has to run recruitment procedures that check this, and it has to hold the information listed in Schedule 3 for every person.
The word doing the work here is "employed." CQC's guidance treats a person employed for the regulated activity as including agency and bank staff, not only people on the provider's own payroll. So the worker you placed on Monday sits inside the home's Regulation 19 duty from the first shift.
The duty itself never moves. It belongs to the provider, the care home or the domiciliary care service, and it stays there. What the provider can do is rely on checks carried out by someone else. Where recruitment or checks are done by a party other than the provider, such as your agency, the provider must assure itself that those checks are complete and satisfactory. That single sentence is the whole commercial relationship. The home is trusting your file, and it has to be able to prove it was right to.
The split: what's theirs, what's yours
It helps to draw the line plainly.
| The provider (care home) | The staffing agency (you) | |
|---|---|---|
| Holds the Regulation 19 duty | Yes, and it never transfers | No |
| Inspected by CQC | Yes | No |
| Runs the checks | Can do its own, or rely on yours | Runs them on the workers you supply |
| Must assure itself the checks are done | Yes, on every worker including agency | Provides the evidence that lets them |
| Carries the risk if a file is thin | At inspection, on their rating | With the client, on the next booking |
The home cannot outsource the duty to you. You cannot make the duty go away by doing the checks. Both things are true at once, and the join between them is the assurance the provider needs. In practice that assurance is a documented one. A home that can point to a vetted agency it has a written agreement with, and files it has audited, is showing the proactive governance CQC expects. A home relying on an agency it can't evidence is exposed, and it knows it.
This is why the duty flows down to you even though CQC never knocks on your door. It arrives through the preferred-supplier agreement or framework terms you signed, and through the spot audits the home runs on the files you send. Your process is being inspected. The inspector is just the registered manager, acting for CQC before CQC arrives.
What you should be able to produce on request
When a home audits your file, or an inspector asks the manager to walk through it, the underlying question is whether the Schedule 3 information is there and stands up. For each worker you supply, that means:
- Proof of identity, with a recent photograph
- Right to work in the UK
- The relevant DBS certificate, with barred-list information where the role calls for it
- Satisfactory evidence of conduct in previous health or social care work, or work with children or vulnerable adults
- Where a relevant previous role involved vulnerable adults, verification of why it ended, so far as reasonably practicable
- Documentary evidence of relevant qualifications
- A full employment history, with a satisfactory written explanation of any gaps
- Relevant information about the person's physical and mental health for the role
Two points about this list are worth holding on to.
First, "satisfactory" throughout means satisfactory in CQC's opinion, not yours. A thin reference that technically exists is not the same as satisfactory evidence of conduct. If a former employer will only confirm dates, that is a common situation, and the answer is to record what you did to obtain more. CQC's own guidance points at exactly this: where evidence is limited, inspectors want to see the decision-making, the attempts you made, and the judgement you reached. A blank where a reference should be is a problem. A blank with a clear note of three chase attempts and a risk assessment is a defensible file.
Second, this is a record you produce on request, not a form you file once and forget. The value is in being able to pull it up on the day the home asks, complete and readable, without a scramble. That was true in education with Ofsted, and it's true here. The audit trail is the product.
Where the regulations stop
Plenty of what agencies worry about is not written into the regulations, and it's worth being straight about that rather than inventing rules.
Schedule 3 does not set a number of references. It asks for satisfactory evidence of conduct in previous care work, and leaves the sufficiency to CQC's judgement. It does not prescribe how many times you chase a silent referee, or over how long, before you turn to an alternative. It does not lay down a house style for the reference form. Those are matters of good practice and of what a given home's audit will accept, not statutory minimums you can quote back at anyone.
What the regulations are firm on is the substance: conduct in previous care work, reasons relevant roles ended, a complete employment history with gaps explained, and evidence good enough to satisfy an inspector. Get the substance right and the format looks after itself. For how that substance plays out in the reference itself, the care worker references guide goes deeper, and the discipline of scrutinising rather than filing is the same one we set out for safer recruitment references in education.
Where PassQ fits
This is the problem we built PassQ for. We clear the full record on one worker, references, DBS, right to work, and qualifications, chased and verified, and we deliver it as an audit-ready file the home can rely on when it needs to show its working.
The part that earns its keep in care is the voice agent. It picks up the phone and chases referees on a real call, and it switches into any language and accent to get an answer. In a care workforce where a former manager or a fellow carer answers more readily in Tagalog, Romanian, or Portuguese, that is often the difference between a reference back in time and a shift you lose. It's live today, and you can listen to it work.
Our founding-partner pricing is on the pricing page. If you want to see what a faster, better-documented file looks like for a care desk, get in touch.
The short version
CQC inspects the care home, not your agency. But under Regulation 19 the home must assure itself that the checks on every worker it uses, including your agency workers, are complete and satisfactory. That duty lands on your desk through the home's audits and your supplier agreement. For each worker you should be able to produce the Schedule 3 set: identity, right to work, DBS, conduct in previous care work, reasons relevant roles ended, qualifications, a full employment history with gaps explained, and health information, plus a record of your reasoning wherever the evidence is thin. The regulations set the substance, not the exact number of references or the chase protocol. Most agencies are doing broadly the right things. The gaps that cost you bookings are in how consistently the file is built and how fast you can produce it. Both are fixable.
Frequently asked questions
Does CQC inspect staffing agencies? No. CQC regulates and inspects the care provider, the home or the domiciliary service. It doesn't inspect the staffing agency directly. But under Regulation 19 the provider must satisfy itself that recruitment checks on every worker, including agency workers, are complete and satisfactory, so the duty reaches your files through the provider's audits and the terms of the booking.
Does Regulation 19 cover agency workers? Yes. CQC's guidance treats a person employed for the regulated activity as including agency and bank staff, not only directly employed staff. Where checks are carried out by a party other than the provider, such as your agency, the provider must assure itself that those checks are complete and satisfactory.
What does CQC check about staffing at inspection? Under the single assessment framework, the relevant quality statement is "safe and effective staffing." It looks for robust and safe recruitment practices that make sure all staff, including agency staff and volunteers, are suitably experienced, competent and able to carry out their role. Recruitment records are part of the evidence behind that judgement.
What records should a care agency be able to produce for a worker? The Schedule 3 set: proof of identity, right to work, the relevant DBS with barred-list information where it applies, evidence of conduct in previous care work, verification of why a relevant previous role ended, qualifications, a full employment history with gaps explained, and relevant health information. Where evidence is thin, keep a record of what you did to obtain more.
How many references does CQC require for a care worker? The regulations don't set a number. Schedule 3 asks for satisfactory evidence of conduct in previous care work, and "satisfactory" means satisfactory in CQC's opinion. The test is the quality of the evidence and your reasoning where it's limited, not a fixed count of letters.