Home & housing
Residential care homes
A care home is a registered, inspected place where the room and the help arrive as one arrangement from one organisation. The practical differences from supported living are eight, and they mostly grow out of one fact: there is no tenancy of a room.
Last checked on 3 September 2026
What is a residential care home?
A building where adults live and are cared for together, run by an organisation that is registered with the Care Quality Commission for the care it provides there. That organisation recruits and rotas the staff, provides the room and the meals, and answers for the whole arrangement. There is no tenancy of a room in the ordinary sense, and almost every difference on this page grows out of that absence.
What does registration cover?
The regulated activity the organisation provides, and the place it is provided in. Registration is the condition of operating lawfully, and it is what makes inspection possible. It is not an award and it is not a recommendation. What the Commission publishes about the services it holds, and on which cycle, is set out on its Using CQC data page: the Care Directory weekly, the directories with filters and with ratings monthly.
Care Quality Commission, Using CQC data. Care Directory weekly file dated 2 September 2026, directories with filters and with ratings dated 4 August 2026, read on 3 September 2026.
What do the ratings mean?
Where a service has been inspected, it carries a rating on a four step scale, from inadequate through requires improvement and good to outstanding. The words are the Commission's and the scale moves as inspections happen. Two limits are worth holding on to. A rating is a judgement made at a point in time about the service that was seen, and it does not follow a service around forever. And a rating does not compare one building with another down the road, because the two may be registered for different regulated activities. This page prints the scale and stops there. Counting services by rating is a job for the Commission's own files, and no service is counted on this site.
Where does the difference from supported living actually show?
Eight places, and each is checkable rather than a matter of impression.
- Who holds the agreement to be there. In a care home one arrangement covers the room and the help together. In supported living the tenancy and the support are separate, and supported living explained shows what that separation buys.
- What leaving involves. Ending a tenancy follows notice and procedure. Leaving a care home follows the arrangement with the organisation and a fresh decision about what the council will arrange instead.
- Who answers when something goes wrong. In a home one organisation answers for the building, the food and the care. In supported living a landlord answers for the property and a support organisation answers for the help, and knowing which is which matters on the day.
- Who decides who else lives there. A shared supported living house is built household by household. A home fills rooms as they empty.
- What a change of provider means. In supported living, a change of support organisation leaves the tenancy standing. In a home, the same change means leaving the building.
- What the money does. Support money and rent money stay apart in supported living. In a home the charge covers care and accommodation together, which is why the personal budget is worth reading before any figure is accepted.
- What can be altered. A tenanted home can usually be adapted with the landlord's agreement. A room in a home is altered by the organisation that runs the building.
- What the front door does. A door you hold a key to and can lock is a different thing from a room in a building where the staff hold the keys.
What decides who is offered a place?
The same machinery as everywhere else in this subject. Where the conditions are met, section 18 of the Care Act 2014 carries a duty to meet needs for care and support, and section 19 a power to meet other needs. A care home is one of the ways a council can choose to meet what it has decided to meet, and that choice is the one most worth asking about in writing, because it is the choice that is hardest to undo.
Care Act 2014, sections 18 and 19. Version Latest available (Revised) as at 2 September 2026, legislation.gov.uk, read on 3 September 2026.
Is a registered home the only registered option?
It is the route that depends on registration most heavily, and it is one of four. kinds of home and area lines the four up together, including the two that are rarely described in the same breath as a care home.
Who answers if the care is not right?
The organisation first, then the council that arranged the support. The duties that follow a support organisation are set out in what a provider must do, and the way out of an arrangement that has stopped working is in changing your support.
Sources read for this page
- Care Quality Commission, Using CQC data
- Care Act 2014, revised text on legislation.gov.uk, version Latest available (Revised) as at 2 September 2026
- Care and support statutory guidance, Department of Health and Social Care, updated 22 July 2025
Each source above was opened on 3 September 2026. Where a page here prints a section number or a figure, the source line beside it names the version that number was read from.