The 10 Dignity Do's: a guide for homecare providers

The 10 Dignity Do's are a set of principles that define what dignified care looks like in practice. Developed through the Dignity in Care campaign and endorsed by the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE), they provide a practical, values-based framework for everyone working in UK domiciliary care.

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For homecare agencies, they also carry direct regulatory weight: CQC Regulation 10: Dignity and Respect makes it a legal requirement under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 for providers to ensure people are treated with dignity at all times.

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This guide covers all 10 Dignity Do's, what each one means in the context of home-based care, and how to make them a practical part of how your agency operates every day.

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Where the 10 Dignity Do's come from

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The 10 Dignity Do's were developed as part of the Dignity in Care campaign, which launched in November 2006 with a clear aim: to put dignity and respect at the heart of UK care services. The campaign was led by the National Dignity Council and endorsed by the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE). Before launch, focus groups were held across the country to understand what dignity in care actually meant to people receiving services, their families, and the professionals supporting them. The 10 Dignity Do's emerged directly from those conversations.

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The principles are sometimes referred to as the "10 Point Dignity Challenge." They're not a standalone compliance checklist, but a values-based set of commitments about how to treat people, applicable to every interaction in a care setting: from how a carer greets someone at their front door to how a manager handles a complaint at the end of a difficult shift.

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For domiciliary care specifically, these principles carry particular significance. Care workers enter someone's private home, often during the most personal moments of a person's day. The trust involved is substantial, and the potential impact of getting it right, or wrong, is real. The Dignity Do's provide a shared, clear standard for where the bar should be set.

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The 10 Dignity Do's: what each one means in homecare

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Here are the 10 Dignity Do's as published by the Dignity in Care campaign, with practical context for domiciliary care teams.

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1. Have a zero tolerance of all forms of abuse. In homecare, this means every team member understanding what constitutes abuse, including neglect, financial harm, emotional mistreatment, and discriminatory behaviour, and knowing exactly how to report it. Zero tolerance is not just a phrase on a poster. It requires robust safeguarding policies, a culture where concerns can be raised without hesitation, and managers who respond promptly and seriously when they are.

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2. Support people with the same respect you would want for yourself or a member of your family. This is the simplest principle to understand and one of the hardest to sustain consistently. It asks care workers to bring genuine care to every visit, not just technical competence. It also asks managers to create the conditions where that is possible: manageable rotas, meaningful inductions, and regular supervision.

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3. Treat each person as an individual by offering a personalised service. No two people receiving homecare have the same needs, history, or preferences. A person who has always started their day with a particular routine, or who observes specific dietary or religious practices, is not a generic service user. They are an individual with a particular life. Good care starts from knowing who that person is.

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4. Enable people to maintain the maximum possible level of independence, choice and control. Providing care should not default to doing things for people. The right question to ask is always: what can this person do for themselves, with appropriate support? Preserving independence, even when it takes longer or requires more creativity, is a cornerstone of dignified practice.

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5. Listen and support people to express their needs and wants. Active listening is a professional skill, not a passive one. It includes noticing when someone seems unsettled but has not said anything, checking understanding, and not rushing conversations to stick to a schedule. For people with communication difficulties, it also means ensuring the right tools and approaches are in place to support them to be heard.

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6. Respect people's right to privacy. In domiciliary care, this applies in very concrete ways: knocking before entering a room, closing doors during personal care, not discussing someone's situation within earshot of others, and ensuring personal information is only shared with those who need it. Under CQC Regulation 10, each person's privacy needs must be identified, recorded, and met as far as reasonably possible. This is a legal requirement, not a courtesy.

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7. Ensure people feel able to complain without fear of retribution. A complaints process that exists on paper is not sufficient. People receiving care need to genuinely feel that raising a concern will not affect how they are treated. For managers, this means accessible channels for feedback and a culture that treats complaints as useful information rather than awkward problems to be managed.

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8. Engage with family members and carers as care partners. Families are often deeply involved in the lives of people receiving homecare, and they hold knowledge about the person that no assessment form will fully capture. Involving them as genuine partners, rather than occasional informants, makes for better care and stronger trust across the board.

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9. Assist people to maintain confidence and a positive self-esteem. Many people receiving homecare are navigating real changes to their independence and sense of self. Care workers can have a meaningful impact by focusing on what someone can do, acknowledging their achievements, and treating them as capable adults rather than passive recipients of a service.

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10. Act to alleviate people's loneliness and isolation. Loneliness is one of the most serious health risks facing older adults in the UK, and homecare visits are often an important source of human contact for people who live alone. Taking time to talk, noticing when someone seems more withdrawn than usual, and connecting people with community resources where appropriate are all part of delivering genuinely dignified care.

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The regulatory case for dignity: CQC Regulation 10

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Dignity in homecare is not only a professional obligation. Under CQC Regulation 10: Dignity and Respect, it's a legal requirement. The regulation, which sits within the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, states that providers must ensure their services treat people with dignity and respect at all times, including ensuring privacy, supporting autonomy and independence, and having due regard to protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010.

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CQC can take regulatory action against providers who fail to meet this standard and can refuse registration where providers cannot demonstrate they will comply. In practice, inspectors assess dignity under the "Caring" key question. They will speak to people receiving care and their families, observe interactions, and review records. They are looking for evidence that staff treat people with genuine compassion and respect, and that individual preferences are reflected in the care actually delivered.

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The 10 Dignity Do's map directly onto what CQC inspectors are assessing under this domain. They also connect closely to Regulation 9: Person-centred care, which requires services to be tailored to each person's needs and preferences. The Birdie guide to principles of person-centred care covers what that looks like in practice. Together, these two regulations make clear that dignity is not a soft aspiration sitting alongside the real work of running a homecare agency. It's a concrete, assessable standard with real consequences for providers who fall short.

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For a broader overview of how CQC regulations apply to your agency, the Birdie guide to CQC compliance in homecare covers all 16 fundamental standards in practical terms.

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How to embed the 10 Dignity Do's in your agency

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Knowing the 10 Dignity Do's is one thing. Making them operational in day-to-day care delivery requires deliberate, consistent effort at every level of your organisation.

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Start at induction. Every new care worker should be introduced to the 10 Dignity Do's as part of their onboarding, with practical examples drawn from homecare settings. Abstract principles become meaningful when grounded in scenarios people will actually encounter: what to do when a client does not want to get dressed yet, how to respond when a family member questions a care decision, how to raise a concern about a colleague's conduct. Skills for Care provides guidance on values-based induction as part of the Care Certificate framework, which covers dignity as a core standard.

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Build dignity into care plans. Care plans that record what a person likes, dislikes, values, and wants from their care are the operational expression of dignity. A plan that only records tasks is not person-centred. The Birdie guide to principles of person-centred care covers what good care planning looks like in practice, including how to capture preferences, history, and individual goals in a way that is genuinely useful to frontline workers during every visit.

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Use supervision to reinforce standards. Regular supervision is an opportunity to discuss how dignity is being upheld in real situations, to explore difficult cases, and to support care workers who are finding particular aspects of the role challenging. The code of conduct for healthcare support workers provides a useful framework for structuring those conversations around professional obligations.

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Take complaints seriously. The seventh Dignity Do specifically addresses complaints, and for good reason. How concerns are handled sends a clear signal about your agency's values. A culture where feedback is genuinely welcomed builds trust with clients, families, and staff, and helps you identify problems before they become patterns.

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Invest in ongoing learning. Dignity is not a topic that gets covered once at induction and then ticked off. Reflective practice, where care workers critically assess their own interactions and performance, is one of the most effective tools for maintaining standards over time. The Birdie guide to care worker skills includes practical guidance on continuous professional development for domiciliary care teams. The 6Cs of social care, covering Care, Compassion, Competence, Communication, Courage, and Commitment, offer a complementary values framework that reinforces much of what the Dignity Do's ask of frontline workers.

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How technology can support dignified care in practice

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Digital tools do not deliver dignity: people do. But the right technology can help care workers have the information, time, and context they need to deliver dignified care consistently, particularly when staff are stretched and information can easily be lost between shifts.

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Birdie's 'About Me' feature is designed specifically to support person-centred, dignified care. It allows care managers to build a detailed profile for each person they support, recording their preferences, routines, cultural or religious considerations, important relationships, communication needs, and what matters most to them in daily life. This information is accessible to care workers on their phones during every visit, so the person in front of them is never reduced to a task list.

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Digital care plans in Birdie are built to be personalised and straightforward to update. When a person's needs or preferences change, managers can update the plan and it syncs immediately to carers' devices, ensuring the care being delivered reflects current reality. This matters for dignity because outdated information leads to care that, however well-intentioned, is misaligned with what someone actually needs or wants today.

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The Birdie Family App supports the eighth Dignity Do directly by keeping family members informed and genuinely involved. Families can see care visit updates in real time, reducing anxiety and maintaining their role as active care partners rather than people waiting for a phone call.

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For homecare agencies that want to understand how their care quality performs against CQC standards over time, Birdie's platform includes tools to track care delivery, surface concerns early, and evidence quality consistently. If you want to see how it works in practice, you can book a demo at birdie.care.

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The 10 Dignity Do's offer homecare providers a clear, grounded framework for what respectful, high-quality care looks like in practice. They aren't aspirational extras. They are the baseline from which outstanding care is built, and they are legally underpinned by CQC Regulation 10.

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For managers and agency owners, the most important question is not whether your team can recite the 10 Dignity Do's, but whether they are genuinely embedded in your culture, your care plans, and your everyday practice. That requires investment: in training, in supervision, in good care documentation, and in building an environment where care workers feel confident and supported enough to get the details right on every visit.

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If you want to understand how Birdie supports homecare agencies to deliver and evidence person-centred, dignified care, book a demo to see the platform in action.

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