Audits you design, joined up to the training that follows

Yes. Alongside the built-in templates, CareStream lets you create custom audits from scratch, writing your own questions in your own words and setting the structure that suits what you want to check. You are not limited to standard forms, so a local requirement or a bespoke concern can be captured in an audit that fits it exactly. Once built, your custom audit behaves just like a standard one. You run it, record the results and track it over time within the same audit system, so a bespoke check gets all the same benefits and visibility as the templates that come as standard.

The built-in templates cover the common audits that most services need, giving you a fast start on the shared ground. Custom audits are for the checks that are specific to your service, where no standard template quite fits, such as a local requirement or a concern that came out of a particular incident. The important part is that both live in the same place. Your custom audits are not a separate, second-class tool, they run and are tracked exactly like the standard ones, so your whole audit programme stays in one system rather than splitting between the platform and stray spreadsheets.

Custom audits are reusable, so a concern that started as a one-off can become an audit you run regularly. Once you have built it, you can run it again whenever you need to, and follow its results across runs the same way you would track any built-in audit. This is particularly useful for turning lessons into practice. When an incident or a local issue reveals something worth monitoring, you can build an audit for it once and then keep checking against it over time, adjusting the questions as your requirements change, so the learning actually sticks.

It does, because good governance is specific to a service and inspectors want to see that you monitor the things that matter for your particular setting, not just the generic checklist. Being able to build and run bespoke audits shows that you understand your own risks and have put deliberate checks in place for them. Just as importantly, because custom audits run and are tracked in the same system as the standard ones, you can present a complete governance picture rather than a partial one. Nothing important is hidden in a spreadsheet outside the platform, so your whole quality programme, standard and bespoke, is visible and evidenced in one place.

When you run an audit and it reveals a weakness, for example an infection prevention and control audit scoring low, you can connect that finding to the training that addresses the underlying gap in competence. Because both the audit and the training live in CareStream, that connection is a real, actionable link rather than a note in the minutes that someone has to remember to follow up. From there you can direct the right people to the relevant training, and re-audit later to see whether the score has moved. This turns the audit from something that simply documents a problem into the first step of actually solving it.

Take an infection control audit that comes back with a low score in a particular area of practice. On its own, that score tells you there is a weakness but does nothing to address it. By linking the finding to infection control training, you turn the low score into a prompt to build the competence that was missing. The loop closes when you re-run the audit and see whether the score has improved. That gives you a complete story: you found the issue, you responded with training, and you can show the result. It is exactly the kind of continuous improvement cycle CQC wants to see evidenced.

Recording audit results tells you where the problems are, but it does nothing to fix them, and a low score that sits in a folder tends to reappear at the next audit because the competence beneath it never changed. The value is in what happens after the finding, which is where most audit programmes lose momentum. By connecting findings to training, CareStream deliberately closes the gap between spotting an issue and fixing it. Instead of a growing list of scores, you build a record of problems noticed and acted upon, which is far more useful for both quality and inspection.

CQC's model is built around continuous improvement, so inspectors are less interested in a perfect set of scores than in whether you notice problems, act on them, and can show the action worked. Linking audits to training gives you exactly that chain of evidence, from a low score to the training that addressed it to a re-audit that confirms the improvement. This lets you tell a confident, evidenced story about how your service learns and improves. Rather than presenting audits as isolated checks, you can demonstrate a genuine loop where findings drive competence, which speaks directly to well-led and to the quality statements around learning and improvement.