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1 Birmingham City Council Commissioning – Provider Focus Groups Thank You and Update (Information for all Contracted Providers)

2 REMINDER Birmingham City Council - CareMatch Portal Key Messages – Password Resets (Information for contracted Providers)

3 REMINDER Ensuring Your Current Insurance Documents are Uploaded to the CareMatch Portal (Information for all Birmingham City Council Contracted Providers)

4 The Health and Safety Executive Care (HSE) and Support Worker Health and Safety at Work Reminder (Information for all Providers)

5 Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) Capacity Tracker Updates - What's New to Capacity Tracker (Information for all Providers)

6 Care Quality Commission (CQC) - State of Care 2024/25 (Information for all Providers)

7 CONSULTATION Care Quality Commission (CQC) Consultation on Improving How CQC Assess and Rate Providers – Closes 11 December 2025 (Information for all Providers)

8 Birmingham Community Healthcare (BCHC) NHS Foundation Trust – Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) Team (Information for Birmingham and Solihull Care Homes)

9 REMINDER NHS Birmingham and Solihull Integrated Care Board (BSOL ICB) - Urgent Community Response (UCR) Birmingham and Solihull - Latest Information and Resources (Birmingham and Solihull Care Homes)

10. Digital Care Hub - Stakeholder Updates (Information for all Contracted Providers)

11. REMINDER NHS Birmingham and Solihull (BSOL) Training Hub October/November 2025 (Information for Birmingham and Solihull Care Providers)

1 Birmingham City Council Commissioning – Provider Focus Groups Thank You and Update (Information for all Contracted Providers)

Commissioning would like to thank providers for their input to the Provider Focus Groups held during August and September 2025. We are currently developing an action plan in response to the helpful feedback received and will share this once finalised.

2 REMINDER Birmingham City Council - CareMatch Portal Key Messages – Password Resets (Information for contracted Providers)

For security reasons, users will be asked to periodically update their passwords for access to CareMatch Portal. Below are some tips to assist with this.

Tip One - For updating passwords that are due for renewal – CareMatch Portal now asks Users to reset their passwords every 90 days Please be aware that individual browser settings may auto-populate new password fields with passwords saved for other sites To avoid difficulty logging in following a password reset, please delete all auto filled password fields and type in your new password from scratch.

Tip Two - If you are logging in but receive the message below, please contact the Market Intelligence Team for your account to be unlocked before using a new password If the account is locked before you requested a new password, it will remain locked Once unlocked, you can use your new password.

“You have been locked out due, as your logon credentials have been repeatedly entered incorrectly. Please contact marketintelligence@birmingham.gov.uk”.

3 REMINDER Ensuring Your Current Insurance Documents are Uploaded to the CareMatch Portal (Information for all Birmingham City Council Contracted Providers)

It is an important part of your contractual obligations to Birmingham City Council, and a legal requirement, to ensure you have valid insurance at all times. It is important that when you renew your insurance documents you remember to upload a copy to the CareMatch Portal following the instructions in Section 8.8 of the Care Match Portal User Guide:

CareMatch Portal User Guide

If you are experiencing technical issues uploading the documents, email market.intelligence@birmingham.gov.uk

Reminder alerts are sent from CareMatch Portal to inform you when your insurance documents were coming up to their expiry date and when they had expired to assist you to remain compliant with your contractual obligations around insurance. To ensure you are receiving these alerts, check your email alerts are switched on (see section 4.5 of the User Guide for how you can check and change user settings).

No evidence of current insurance cover on the CareMatch Portal at the levels required by your contract will be treated as a breach of contract until evidence of cover is provided.

Providers are finding the cost of insurance has risen as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and as such it is important you allow enough time for finding an alternative insurance provider, if needed, before your current insurance expires. Contact your Care Association to see what support and advice they can offer. It is important that you inform you area commissioners if you are having difficulty arranging future cover before the expiry of your current insurance.

Who to contact in the Commissioning Team?

4 The Health and Safety Executive Care (HSE) and Support Worker Health and Safety at Work Reminder (Information for all Providers)

As winter approaches, days become shorter and the weather generally becomes poorer, it is a good time consider and revisit everyone’s responsibilities around health and safety in the workplace, and particularly the responsibilities of employers to their employees.

The HSE want to take the opportunity to remind all care and support organisations of the need to take proactive and practical steps to ensure the welfare and safety of workers, particularly those working alone and/or in the local community or in people’s homes. While this is not an exhaustive list, we intend the following to act as a reminder to review some practical requirements:

• Risk assessments are carried out, documented and regularly reviewed with full employee involvement and input. This includes ensuring that risk mitigation and elimination measures, and action plans are regularly reviewed, up to date, appropriate, and agreed.
• Lone and community working is risk assessed, and appropriate risk mitigation and support measures are in place – key areas for consideration will include travel, environment, pets, preventing and managing violent situations, safe systems of work, means of contact, and reporting/monitoring mechanisms.
• Employees receive health and safety training, and access to information and guidance.
• Reporting and monitoring systems are in place.
• Practice is regularly monitored, reviewed, and learning taken and actioned.

Further information and guidance in relation to safety in social care is available from The Health and Safety Executive on its website -

5 Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) Capacity Tracker Updates - What's New to Capacity Tracker (Information for all Providers)

Please see below a link to the changes to the Capacity Tracker. Unless otherwise stated, these took place on Wednesday 29 October 2025.

6 Care Quality Commission (CQC) - State of Care 2024/25 (Information for all Providers)

The CQC’s annual assessment of the state of health care and adult social care in England has been published.

The State of Care report explores trends, shares examples of good and outstanding care, and highlights where care needs to improve.

Please use this link to read the Report

7 CONSULTATION Care Quality Commission (CQC) Consultation on Improving How CQC Assess and Rate Providers – Closes 11 December 2025 (Information for all Providers)

This is your opportunity to share your views and help the CQC to improve how they assess and rate health and care providers. They would really value your input, please use the link below to take part.

The consultation closes at 5pm on 11 December 2025.

8 Birmingham Community Healthcare (BCHC) NHS Foundation Trust – Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) Team (Information for Birmingham and Solihull Care Homes)

Message from the Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) Team

Dear Care Homes and Care Home Champions,

I am contacting you on behalf of Infection Prevention and Control.

On Friday 24 October 2025 IPC held our third IPC Annual Expo at Moseley Hall Hospital.

The IPC Annual Expo is our event promoting all things infection control, which coincides with International Infection Control Week

This event saw the launch the updated IPC Care Home Winter Outbreak Resource Pack.

Further information about this subject has been circulated to providers. If you don’t have a copy, please email marketintelligence@birmingham.gov.uk

The team and I wish to thank all you who were able to attend on the day. IPC would also like to say a special thank you to following care homes teams:

• Austin Rose
• Bramley Grove
• New Day
• Swan Court

Staff from the care homes above not only attended but also took part in the IPC Expo by creating some fantastic Infection Control display stands and engaging with their peers and colleagues not only from the various care homes across Birmingham, Solihull but also our staff from BCHC NHS Foundation Trust.

Further IPC Updates

• Friday 14 November at 2.00pm is the date and time of the next IPC Virtual Training Session, the topic of this training session will be Bacteraemia and Sepsis

If you have any comments/queries regarding the above, require infection control advice, outbreak support, training, etc please contact the team via bchc.ipcdata1@nhs.net or 0121 466 6550

IPC wish to thank you all for your continued engagement and support.

Kind Regards

David Sewell, Senior Administrator

Infection Prevention and Control

9 REMINDER NHS Birmingham and Solihull Integrated Care Board (BSOL ICB) - Urgent Community Response (UCR) Birmingham and Solihull - Latest Information and Resources (Birmingham and Solihull Care Homes)

Care Homes in Birmingham and Solihull are advised to contact the UCR in the first instance for receiving urgent care. The team can provide a rapid response service within two hours of your call. This referral service offers an alternative to calling an ambulance and helps to avoid unnecessary hospital admissions or readmissions. This service has highly skilled and dedicated clinicians who can deliver a rapid response to the urgent care needs of your residents or refer to the ambulance service if emergency hospital care is needed.

For further information please see link below:

10. Digital Care Hub - Stakeholder Updates (Information for all Contracted Providers)

Digital Care Hub provides advice and support to the adult social care sector on technology, data protection and cyber security Run by social care providers for social care providers.

• Pilot opportunity: Redflags® cyber awareness tool

The Digital Care Hub are inviting adult social care providers to test Redflags®, a behaviour-driven tool that uses real-time prompts and short micro-learning to strengthen staff cyber security. Please use the link below for further information.

• Case studies:

The Digital Hub have recently released a wide variety of stakeholder case studies to see what tech is working for who, and how, Case Studies | Digital Care Hub (see link below)

Do take a look when trying to work out what tech would suit your organisation

Please use this link for further news, events and case studies

11. REMINDER NHS Birmingham and Solihull (BSOL) Training Hub October/November 2025 (Information for Birmingham and Solihull Care Providers)

The Birmingham and Solihull Training Hub Website is for those working in a primary or social care role in the Solihull / Birmingham area. The information is for students looking for support with career development or a visitor wanting to find out more

Please use this link for training, further information and booking

All training events are listed in the calendar section. You can also contact the training hub by email bsol.traininghub@nhs.net.

The next sessions are:

3 November 2025 Midlands ASC-WDS (Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set) workshops 9:30 am - 10:30 am

3 November and 4 November 2025 Safeguarding adults – for managers and newly appointed safeguarding leads 9:30 am - 5:00 pm each day

4 November 2025 A Mile in My Shoes – Dementia Awareness - 10:00 am - 2:00 pm

5 November 2025 The Palliative Care Pathway – preparing for Winter Pressures 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm

6 November 2025 Positive Behaviour Support 10:00 am - 2:00 pm

6 November 2025 Continuing Health Care (CHC) Checklist Training (November 2025) 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm

11 November 2025 (Dementia) Where Worlds Collide – Understanding Distress Behaviours 10:00 am - 2:00 pm

11 November 2025 Midlands ASC-WDS (Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set) workshops 11:00 am - 12:00 pm

12 November 2025 The Fair Pay Agreement process in adult social care – what you need to know as a frontline care worker 2:30 pm - 3:30 pm

13 November 2025 T.I.M.E Wound Assessment 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm