Sample policy · Reg 10

Dignity, Privacy and Respect Policy

Statutory anchor: Regulation 10 (dignity and respect), Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 (SI 2014/2936). This policy also engages Regulation 9 (person-centred care), Regulation 11 (need for consent), Regulation 13 (safeguarding service users from abuse and improper treatment), Regulation 17 (good governance), the Equality Act 2010 and the Human Rights Act 1998. · primary source

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Verivius pack version v1.1, 2026-07-19

1. What the regulation says

Service users must be treated with dignity and respect. (Reg 10(1): the headline duty)

having due regard to any relevant protected characteristics (as defined in section 149(7) of the Equality Act 2010) of the service user. (Reg 10(2)(c): protected characteristics)

The full text of the regulation is at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2014/2936/regulation/10. Where this policy and the regulation diverge, the regulation wins.

2. Plain-English summary

Service users must be treated with dignity and respect. In particular, you have to protect their privacy, support their autonomy, independence and involvement in the community, and have due regard to any relevant protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010.

3. Purpose

The purpose of this policy is to make sure that every person using [Service Name] is treated with dignity, privacy and respect at all times.

Dignity is not limited to personal care. It applies to every interaction, including consultation, treatment, communication, waiting areas, records, complaints, intimate care, decision-making, safeguarding, visiting, remote contact and end-of-life care where relevant.

This policy supports Regulation 10 dignity and respect, Regulation 9 person-centred care, Regulation 11 consent, Regulation 13 safeguarding, Regulation 17 good governance and the Equality Act 2010.

4. Policy warning

People must not be left in undignified situations, exposed unnecessarily, spoken to disrespectfully, ignored, mocked, rushed, discriminated against, isolated unnecessarily, or denied privacy without a clear and lawful reason.

A breach of dignity may also be a safeguarding concern, complaint, professional-conduct issue, equality issue or evidence of poor governance.

Staff must act immediately if they see poor, disrespectful or undignified practice.

5. Scope

This policy applies to:

Local adoption decisions

Before adoption, the provider defines:

6. Principles

The service will make sure that people are:

7. Responsibilities

All staff are responsible for treating people with dignity and respect.

Managers are responsible for setting expectations, challenging poor practice and ensuring that dignity is reflected in supervision, training and audit.

The Registered Manager is responsible for ensuring that systems, staffing, premises, records and culture support dignity, privacy and respect.

The provider or Nominated Individual is responsible for oversight where dignity concerns are repeated, serious or linked to service design.

8. Communication

Staff must communicate in a respectful, clear and person-centred way.

Staff must:

Communication must be adapted where a person has sensory, cognitive, language, learning-disability, autism, mental-health or other communication needs.

9. Privacy

The service must protect privacy during care, treatment, consultation and communication.

This includes:

Privacy must only be restricted where there is a clear safety, legal, safeguarding or care reason.

10. Intimate care and examinations

During intimate care, examinations or procedures, staff must:

The Chaperone Policy and Consent to Intimate Examinations and Procedures Policy must be followed.

11. Autonomy and independence

The service must support people to make choices and maintain independence as far as possible.

Staff must not remove choice simply because it is easier, faster or more convenient.

Where a person's choice involves risk, staff must assess and manage the risk proportionately while respecting autonomy.

Restrictions must be justified, recorded, reviewed and least restrictive.

12. Protected characteristics and equality

The service must have due regard to protected characteristics, including age, disability, sex, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, and sexual orientation.

Staff must not discriminate, harass or victimise people.

The service must make reasonable adjustments where required and must record how individual needs and preferences are met.

13. Culture, language and personal preferences

Staff must ask about and respect, where reasonably possible:

Preferences must be recorded and shared with staff who need to know.

14. Visitors, relationships and community

The service must respect relationships that matter to the person.

People should be supported to maintain contact with family, friends, advocates, carers and others important to them, unless there is a clear legal, safeguarding or best-interests reason to restrict contact.

Restrictions on visitors or contact must be proportionate, recorded and reviewed.

15. Surveillance and monitoring

The service must not use surveillance, monitoring or recording unless there is a clear lawful reason, risk assessment, governance approval and transparency.

Any surveillance must protect dignity, privacy and data protection rights.

People must be informed unless there is a lawful reason not to do so.

Surveillance must not be used as a substitute for safe staffing, proper supervision or good care.

16. Dignity-concern response workflow

Staff must report concerns where a person is:

The Registered Manager must consider whether the matter requires incident reporting, safeguarding, complaint handling, staff supervision, disciplinary action or CQC notification.

  1. Restore dignity and safety. Staff stop the poor practice, protect privacy, address immediate clinical or emotional needs and explain what will happen next.
  2. Listen and support. The person's account and preferred outcome are heard in an accessible way. An advocate, representative or interpreter is offered where needed.
  3. Record. The concern, people present, immediate action, impact and the person's own words are recorded without judgement.
  4. Triage. The manager considers complaint, incident, safeguarding, equality, professional-conduct, police, duty-of-candour and CQC-notification routes, recording each applicable decision.
  5. Correct. The provider investigates proportionately and assigns care-plan, premises, staffing, supervision, training or policy actions with owners and dates.
  6. Close through governance. The person is told the outcome where lawful and appropriate. The record closes only when actions and review dates are linked to the relevant governance registers.

17. Records

Records must show, where relevant:

Records must be respectful and factual.

The dignity concern is cross-linked to any complaint, incident, safeguarding or staff-conduct record. Resulting controls are linked to the risk, training, supervision, audit and improvement-actions registers with owners and review dates.

18. Training

Staff must receive training appropriate to their role on:

Dignity must also be discussed in supervision where concerns or role risk require it.

19. Audit and governance

The Registered Manager must audit dignity, privacy and respect at least annually, and more often where concerns arise.

The audit may include:

Findings must be recorded in the audit register. Corrective actions are assigned in the improvement-actions register, systemic concerns are linked to the risk register, and competence actions are linked to training and supervision records.

20. Related policies

This policy should be read with:

21. Review

This policy will be reviewed annually, or sooner following a complaint, safeguarding concern, dignity-related incident, CQC finding, equality concern, change in service model or change in legal or regulatory guidance.

22. Sources and further reading

This template is based on CQC's guidance for providers and managers, the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, and other topic-specific legislation and guidance listed below. It is a starting point for adaptation, not a substitute for legal, clinical, HR, safeguarding or specialist professional advice.

23. When to seek further advice

Seek specialist advice where the issue involves serious harm, safeguarding, deprivation of liberty, restraint, children, professional misconduct, controlled drugs, radiation, termination of pregnancy, infection outbreak, water safety, employment dismissal, DBS barring referral, or regulatory enforcement.

24. Document control

Version Date Author Changes
v1 2026-06-10 Verivius (sample) Initial sample template, conformed to the Verivius policy standard.
v1.1 2026-07-19 Verivius (sample) Added local service decisions, a six-stage dignity-concern response workflow and explicit links from concerns and audit findings to governance records.

This sample policy template was issued by Verivius. It is a template, not a substitute for legal advice or the provider's own policy-development process. Where this template and live law or regulator guidance diverge, the live source wins.

What good looks like here

Written from an ex-CQC inspector's chair, but the point is safe, well-led care your team can stand behind. Each row shows what strong evidence looks like, what thin evidence looks like, and where the expectation comes from.

Dignity harm rarely arrives as one reportable event. It accumulates: a curtain not fully drawn during a transfer, a continence conversation held at reception within earshot of the waiting room, a person addressed by a pet name nobody asked them about, a modesty or gender-of-carer preference recorded at assessment and never seen again by the bank staff on a Sunday shift. None of that looks like an incident, so it leaves no trail unless the service deliberately makes one, and the person affected is often the least likely to complain, because the member of staff involved is the one who will be washing or treating them tomorrow. That silence is why the evidence here has to come from observation of practice, from asking people directly, and from preference records that visibly reach the point of care, rather than from the incident log. Where a service gets this right, care is shaped by the person rather than by the routine and people keep the standing they arrived with. Where it does not, the first sign is usually a family complaint about something that had been running for months.

  1. A reported dignity concern is triaged and routed onward, not just written up and closed. The manager weighs the complaint, incident, safeguarding, equality, professional-conduct, police, duty-of-candour and CQC-notification routes and records which applied, so the person's concern reaches the right response and the colleague who picks it up next can see the decision was made.

    Strong evidence: The triage step of the dignity-concern response workflow (section 16), where each applicable route decision is recorded, cross-linked to any complaint, incident, safeguarding or staff-conduct record (section 17).

    Weak evidence: A concern closed with a line such as "staff spoken to, matter resolved", with nothing recorded about which routes were weighed, so nobody reading it later can tell whether the safeguarding, complaint or professional-conduct question was ever asked. A second version records a referral to the local authority safeguarding team and treats it as though it had also discharged any CQC notification, when the two are separate duties with separate triggers. The weakest sits only in a supervision note, with no cross-link to the complaint the family raised about the same episode weeks later. The routes themselves are statutory; the recorded triage decision showing each was considered is a Verivius default.

    Our recommended baseline. Not a legal or regulatory requirement, but a sensible standard we suggest where the rules leave the detail to you. Adapt it to your service.

  2. Recorded preferences reach the staff who deliver care, not just sit in an assessment field. The person's preferred name, modesty and gender-of-carer preferences, and cultural or religious needs are known at the point of care, so someone meeting them for the first time is not starting cold.

    Strong evidence: The records section (section 17) capturing preferences, communication needs, reasonable adjustments and cultural or religious needs, shared with staff who need to know (section 13).

    Weak evidence: A preferred form of address, a modesty preference and a gender-of-carer preference captured in an assessment field at admission, while the handover sheet, rota note and task list carry none of it, so bank and agency staff meet the person cold. The quickest test is asking three staff on shift what the person prefers to be called and getting three different answers, or finding a preference recorded once at admission that nobody has asked the person to confirm since. The duty is to design care to achieve the person's preferences and to have due regard to relevant protected characteristics; the route by which a preference travels to the point of care is for the provider to choose.

    A legal duty. This comes from legislation that applies to your service, so meeting it is not optional. The exact provision is cited beneath the badge.

    Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, reg 9(1)(c) and reg 9(3)(b); reg 10(2)(a)

  3. Intimate care and examinations show consent and a chaperone offer, not just that the procedure happened. Exposure is minimised and the person can decline or stop part-way through.

    Strong evidence: Chaperone and consent records sampled in the annual dignity audit (section 19), against the intimate-care steps in section 10 (explain, obtain consent, offer a chaperone, stop if consent is withdrawn).

    Weak evidence: Consent notes that capture the start of the procedure but nothing about what was said when the person tensed, asked to pause or went quiet part-way through, so the clinician's actions are recorded and the person's words are not, and there is no way to show consent held throughout rather than only at the outset. Alongside it, "chaperone offered" ticked on every record in the sample, including entries where no chaperone was present and no declining was noted, which shows a template rather than a conversation. Consent and the right to withdraw it are statutory; the chaperone offer rests on professional guidance rather than the regulations, which is why it has to read as a conversation and not a box.

    The recognised standard from a professional or clinical body, such as NICE or a royal college. Not a legal duty, but the accepted mark of safe practice, and a departure needs a documented reason.

  4. Restrictions on privacy, autonomy or visitors are justified and reviewed, not left running for convenience. Each restriction has a clear safety, legal, safeguarding or best-interests reason and a review, and is the least restrictive option.

    Strong evidence: Records of restrictions and their rationale (section 17), against sections 9, 11 and 14 requiring restrictions to be proportionate, recorded, reviewed and least restrictive.

    Weak evidence: A visitor restriction or a locked door justified once as "for safety", with no named reason, no less restrictive option considered and no review date, so it is still running months later because nobody owns removing it. Restrictions that live in a staff message, a handover book or a whiteboard instruction rather than in the person's own record are the ones that outlast the reason they were put in place. The weakest version is a blanket rule applied to everyone on a unit, which by definition was never weighed against this person's circumstances, and where the arrangement may amount to a deprivation of liberty it needs the Mental Capacity Act route rather than a line in the daily notes. The review interval itself is a Verivius default.

    A legal duty. This comes from legislation that applies to your service, so meeting it is not optional. The exact provision is cited beneath the badge.

    Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, reg 13(4)(a) and reg 13(5); Mental Capacity Act 2005 s.4A and s.6

  5. The annual dignity audit produces assigned, owned actions, not just observations. Findings feed the improvement-actions register, systemic concerns feed the risk register, and competence gaps feed training and supervision, so what the audit finds actually changes the care people receive.

    Strong evidence: The audit register entries (section 19), with corrective actions assigned in the improvement-actions register with owners and review dates, and systemic concerns linked to the risk register.

    Weak evidence: An audit written as a list of observations with "to be addressed" beside them, no named owner, no review date, and a following audit that raises the same three findings again. If the improvement-actions register holds no entries traceable back to the last dignity audit, the audit is a description of the service rather than a control on it. An audit built only from a record sample is the other common gap, because what goes wrong here shows up in observation of practice and in what people say when they are asked, not in the notes. The regulations require a system that assesses, monitors and improves quality; the annual dignity cadence is a Verivius default, not a fixed statutory interval.

    Our recommended baseline. Not a legal or regulatory requirement, but a sensible standard we suggest where the rules leave the detail to you. Adapt it to your service.

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Last verified 20 July 2026

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Last reviewed 19 July 2026