Your CQC Registered Manager Interview

Think about the person behind the question.

Imagine a daughter asking, “If something goes wrong on a Sunday, who makes sure my father is safe?” She is not asking for your job description. She wants to know whether somebody understands the service well enough to organise a dependable response. That is a useful way to approach preparation. Your explanation should connect responsibility to something that actually happens for a person receiving care.

For example, saying that the on-call telephone is available is only a beginning. Who answers it? What information can they access? Which decisions can they make? What happens if they cannot arrange a safe response? How will you find out what happened? These are practical questions to work through with your employer, not sentences to invent the night before an interview.

Separate your role from somebody else's.

An organisation may also have a nominated individual, often shortened to NI. That person supervises the management of regulated activities on behalf of the organisation. The owner, director, nominated individual and registered manager may be different people, and in some arrangements one person holds more than one role. Write down your actual arrangement. Do not assume that the person with the most senior title will automatically do your part.