Four data banks: the law, the systems that run on it, the technology arriving next, and how this node protects you while you read. Tap a card to expand it.
CA-14 Care Act 2014 — the spine One law that reset adult social care in England.
It replaced decades of patchwork law with a single framework: wellbeing at the centre , a duty to prevent needs escalating, national eligibility criteria, a right to assessment regardless of finances, and equal recognition for unpaid carers.
S.42 Section 42: the safeguarding duty When a council must make enquiries.
The three-part test: an adult has care and support needs , is experiencing or at risk of abuse or neglect , and cannot protect themselves because of those needs. Meet all three and the local authority must act — and Making Safeguarding Personal means the person's own wishes shape the outcome.
ABU Ten categories of abuse Know what you are looking for.
Care Act statutory guidance names ten: physical, domestic, sexual, psychological, financial or material, modern slavery, discriminatory, organisational, neglect and acts of omission, and self-neglect . Several often travel together — financial abuse rarely arrives alone .
MCA Mental Capacity Act 2005 Five principles before anyone decides for you.
1. Assume capacity. 2. Give all practicable support to decide. 3. An unwise decision is not an incapable one. 4. Act in best interests. 5. Choose the least restrictive option. Capacity is decision-specific and time-specific — never a blanket label.
DoLS Deprivation of liberty Care must never quietly become confinement.
Where someone who lacks capacity is under continuous supervision and control and not free to leave, that is a deprivation of liberty — it must be independently authorised , kept under review, and always the least restrictive arrangement that keeps the person safe.
LPA Lasting Power of Attorney Chosen in advance, used when it matters.
Two types: health and welfare , and property and financial affairs . Neither works until registered with the Office of the Public Guardian, and a health and welfare LPA only speaks when the person cannot decide for themselves . Attorneys must still act within the MCA's best-interests rules.
EQ-10 Equality Act 2010 Nine protected characteristics, one duty to adjust.
Age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation. Services must make reasonable adjustments so disabled people are not placed at a substantial disadvantage.
HRA Human Rights Act 1998 Four articles every care worker touches daily.
Article 2 — the right to life. Article 3 — no inhuman or degrading treatment. Article 5 — the right to liberty. Article 8 — respect for private and family life. Public care providers are legally bound by all of them, every shift.
DoC Duty of Candour When things go wrong, honesty is the law.
Registered providers must be open and honest when care causes notifiable harm: tell the person promptly, explain what happened, apologise, and record it. An apology is not an admission of liability — it is the start of putting things right.
CAL Caldicott: sharing with care Confidential data has rules — and so does silence.
The Caldicott principles govern how health and care information is used: justify the purpose, use the minimum necessary, restrict access to need-to-know, and remember the counterweight — the duty to share information for safe care can be as important as the duty to protect it .
VOX The right to be heard Advocacy is a legal duty, not a favour.
Where someone would struggle to be involved in their own assessment or safeguarding enquiry and has no appropriate person to support them, the Care Act requires an independent advocate . The Mental Capacity Act adds IMCAs for serious decisions. No decision about me without me.
RBL Reablement Short-term, goal-led support — usually up to six weeks.
It helps people relearn the skills of daily living after illness, injury or a hospital stay — washing, dressing, cooking, moving safely. Done well, many people need little or no ongoing homecare afterwards . The goal is independence, not dependency.
D2A Discharge to Assess Assess people at home, not from a hospital bed.
Four pathways: Pathway 0 — home, no new support; Pathway 1 — home with reablement or support; Pathway 2 — short-term bedded rehab; Pathway 3 — 24-hour care for the most complex needs. Most people should go home first, then be assessed there.
CQC The five CQC questions Safe · Effective · Caring · Responsive · Well-led.
Every inspection of a registered care service in England hangs on these five words. They also make a useful daily mirror for any team: would your service answer yes to all five today?
MED Medication support levels Prompting, assisting and administering are not the same thing.
Prompting reminds; assisting enables (opening the blister pack); administering takes responsibility for giving the dose. The level determines training, records and accountability — blur them and safety blurs with them.
LOG Why visit notes matter Factual, timely, neutral — every time.
Good notes protect three things at once: the person, the worker and the truth . Write what was seen and done, not what was assumed. If it isn't recorded, it effectively didn't happen.
SBAR Handover is a safety tool Situation · Background · Assessment · Recommendation.
SBAR turns a worried phone call into a structured escalation a clinician can act on in seconds. Calm, ordered information moves faster than panic.
N-2 NEWS2: reading deterioration Six vital signs, one early warning score.
Respiration rate, oxygen saturation, blood pressure, pulse, level of consciousness and temperature — each scored, then totalled. Rising numbers demand escalation. Soft signs count too : "not themselves today" has launched a thousand timely ambulances.
IPC Infection prevention basics The cheapest life-saving technology is soap.
Hand hygiene at the right moments, correct use of PPE, bare below the elbows, and clean equipment between people. Unglamorous, repetitive, and responsible for more saved lives than most inventions on this page .
PCP Person-centred planning Outcomes, not task lists.
A care plan should read like it was written about a person, with that person — what matters to them, what good looks like in their words, and how support fits their life rather than the rota. Tasks serve outcomes, never the reverse.
VW Virtual wards Hospital-level monitoring, delivered at home.
Sensors and daily reviews let people be treated where they recover best — their own home — while clinicians watch the numbers remotely and step in early when trends turn.
AI AI as a second pair of eyes Triage support, documentation drafts, pattern spotting.
The promising uses are unglamorous: drafting notes, flagging deterioration patterns, cutting admin. The rule that holds it all together: the professional stays accountable, always .
SNS Passive monitoring Falls detection and quiet reassurance — with consent at the centre.
Movement sensors, door sensors, wearables — technology that notices without intruding can extend independent living by years. The line that matters is consent and dignity , not capability.
IOP Records that travel Interoperability is a safety feature, not an IT project.
When a person moves between hospital, homecare and GP, their story should arrive before they do. Shared records prevent repeated questions, missed allergies and unsafe gaps.
DSCR Digital care records The paper daily log is retiring.
Digital social care records time-stamp every entry, surface missed visits instantly, and let a coordinator see a concern the moment it is written rather than at the next file audit. The audit trail protects everyone — most of all the person receiving care.
DIG The analogue switch-off Telecare must cross to digital before the old lines go silent.
The UK's analogue phone network is being retired, and decades of telecare pendants and alarms were built on it. Every device must be checked and migrated to digital — an unmigrated alarm is a silent one , and the people relying on them will not know until it matters.
Ω The rule that never changes Technology assists. People decide.
Automation should remove admin, not judgement . Any tool that distances a decision from the person it affects is a step backwards, however clever it looks.
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A web application firewall filters known attack patterns and bot defences challenge automated scrapers — including AI training crawlers — before they reach anything.
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A Content Security Policy locks which code may run, frame-ancestors blocks clickjacking, nosniff stops MIME games, and a no-referrer policy means the page you came from is nobody's business .
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