Lewisham's Adult Social Care services have been rated 'Good' by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), with inspectors highlighting strengths in safeguarding, supporting people to live healthier lives, and learning and improvement.
The CQC report specifically praised Lewisham's 'strong safeguarding arrangements and a well-established safeguarding partnership'. The domains of 'Supporting people to lead healthier lives' and 'Learning, innovation and improvement' were also identified as areas of strength.
However, the service was found to be just short of an overall 'Good' rating, with areas identified for development including delays in assessments and reviews, ensuring greater involvement of individuals in care decisions, improving support for unpaid carers, and ensuring timely access to support for people with complex needs.
An overarching action plan is being developed to address these findings, incorporating existing programmes of work. Denise Radley, Executive Director for Adult Social Care and Health, stated that the plan will be presented to the Healthier Communities Select Committee in November. The action plan was co-produced with Lewisham unpaid carers, and while more work is needed, significant improvements have already been made, including an increase in the number of carers who find it easy to access information and advice.
In a significant development, mental health social work services are transferring back to the council from South London & Maudsley NHS Trust in mid-September. Ms Radley explained that this transfer 'will enable us to ensure that our statutory responsibilities under the Care Act are met and recorded on a single system with improved reporting and data.' This is seen as a crucial step to address issues identified in the CQC report concerning mental health services.
During the Health and Wellbeing Board meeting on Monday, 14 September 2026, councillors discussed the CQC report, which can be found in the Public reports pack. Councillor Samantha Gardiner, Cabinet Member for Health, Wellbeing and Adult Social Care, emphasised the importance of using this momentum to gather residents' views on the future of adult social care. The council plans to engage with various groups, including the 'Working Together group', 'Learning Disability Partnership Board', 'Lewisham Experts by Experience Network (LEEN)', and 'Unpaid carers' networks' to gather feedback on the action plan. Ms Radley added, 'We will engage with these groups to understand how they would like to be involved going forward and ensure that we draw in feedback from a variety of different groups, service users and unpaid carers.' The council is also exploring further collaboration with Healthwatch on involving service users and carers in the oversight of the action plan.
