Editorial policy

Who we are

The Care Brief is published by We Are Care, a social enterprise working to improve care for the people who draw on care and support. It is written for people who run, staff, commission and regulate adult social care across the UK. Each edition reports what changed and what it means for the people who have to act on it.

We Are Care supplies care staff and brings new people into care work. It also builds Baton, the platform that runs our own compliance and onboarding. The Care Brief is produced by Baton. Care Intelligence.

Why we publish. To support our mission of improving care outcomes. The people who run and commission care make decisions every week, often on partial information, and better insight leads to better decisions. We want this to reach as many people working in care as we can.

We work in the sector we write about, so we say so plainly. What we publish is decided by what matters to readers. We don't report on our own services or on Baton as news, and anything that mentions them says so.

How every piece is made

Every piece is checked against its sources and approved by an editor before it is published. The editor holds editorial responsibility for what we publish.

Editor: Joel Dawson.

Accuracy and sourcing

We name our sources, as specifically as we can, and link to the source at the point we rely on it, not only in a list at the end.
We go to the original where one exists: the department, the regulator, the statistics release, the organisation's own report, rather than a report of a report.
When we could not check something, we say what and why. A figure we could not verify is not presented as settled.
We attribute claims to the organisation that makes them. We do not use "experts say" or other unnamed authority.
We say which nations a figure covers. England-only figures are not presented as UK figures.
When we draw on a broadcast, we quote briefly, name the programme and link to it. We never publish a full transcript.

Quotes, positions and fairness

Quotes are exact. We do not tidy, merge or improve what someone said. If a quote is shortened, the cut is marked.
We may take a position. Where we do, it is labelled as our view and kept apart from the reporting. We never leave out a relevant fact because it weakens that view, and each piece that takes a view also sets out the strongest case against it.
We do not name a care provider negatively unless the matter is already public and we are adding explanation, not making the allegation.

Care

Adult social care is about people, many of them at the most vulnerable point in their lives.

We do not mention anyone's ethnicity, religion, sexuality, disability or other personal characteristics unless it is pertinent to the story.
We report risks to health and safety plainly and proportionately, and avoid alarm the evidence does not support.
When we report on suicide, we follow the Samaritans media guidelines. When we report on end-of-life care and assisted dying, we report the evidence and the positions without sensationalism.

Corrections

If we get something wrong, we correct it fully, quickly and openly.

A correction is added to the piece, dated, saying what was wrong and what is right. Spelling and grammar fixes are not noted.
We do not quietly rewrite a published piece. The corrected version replaces the original, and the change is recorded.
We remove a piece entirely only as a last resort: if the law requires it, or if its errors cannot be put right. If we do, we say so and why.
To report an error: email corrections@wearecare.co.uk. We reply to every report and tell you what we decided.

Guest editors and our readers' panel

From time to time a reader guest-edits an edition of The Care Brief, and a small panel of readers helps us decide what to focus on.

A guest editor's interests are declared in the edition they edit.
A guest editor never chooses coverage of their own organisation.
Our editor still checks and approves everything that is published.
The panel advises on what we cover. It does not approve or see content before it is published.

Where the standards are written down

This policy is the summary. Our house style, article format and checking rules sit behind it, and this page is updated when they change, with the date of the change.