Ms Carol Grogan:

We try to announce one inspection in every three years. The purpose of the announced inspection is to give notice to families, relatives or friends that the resident may wish to come in and meet with us. During Covid we had to flip that on its head and the majority of inspections were unannounced. As Mr. Egan says, there is a place for both. In some cases we need certain people to be on site, so therefore we might do what is called a short-notice announced inspection, which is about 72 hours in advance, requesting that certain people would be on site. The majority of inspections are unannounced. In disability services, just over 70% last year and this year were unannounced and approximately 96% of inspections in facilities for older persons were unannounced.

Similar to what Mr. Egan outlined, we announce who we are because there is a safety issue, especially in regard to disability services where the centres are much smaller. We carry photographic ID. We introduced a "meet your inspector" facility in disability services, so each centre has what is called a case holder, so we send out a little bit of information to disability centres in that regard. Centres for older persons are much bigger, but we change half the caseload for an inspector every year, so that the same inspector is not inspecting the same site all the time. Observation is key. We observe how people are living and their quality of life. We talk to people. Recently, we revised our inspection reports to put a greater emphasis on the lived experience of people, so members will see that this part of the report is now much larger than it would have been heretofore. How they experience the service tells us a lot about how the care is delivered.