How is the CCEA AS 1 Promoting Quality Care unit assessed?

AS 1 is internally assessed through a portfolio (controlled assessment) that your centre marks and CCEA moderates, rather than by a written examination. You typically build a body of work that applies the values of care and service-user rights to a chosen health, social care or early years setting, showing how the setting promotes quality and guards against discrimination and abuse of power. Because it is coursework, strong marks come from concrete, applied detail about a realistic setting.

What are the values of care?

For health and social care settings the values of care are promoting equality and diversity, maintaining confidentiality, and promoting individuals' rights and beliefs. For early years settings the values add particular emphasis on the welfare of the child, keeping children safe, working in partnership with parents and families, encouraging children's learning and development, valuing diversity and confidentiality. Together they form the care value base that guides everyone working in care.

What is meant by the imbalance of power in care?

Care relationships are unequal: the worker has knowledge, control over routines and access to resources that the service user depends on, so power sits with the worker. Good practice redresses this imbalance by empowering service users, offering genuine choice and consultation, enabling independence, providing advocacy, and challenging any abuse of that power. Understanding this imbalance is central to anti-discriminatory, person-centred care.

How is quality care maintained beyond individual workers?

Quality is supported by codes of practice, national minimum standards, regulation and inspection (in Northern Ireland by the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority, RQIA), staff training and vetting (including AccessNI checks), complaints procedures and written policies on confidentiality, safeguarding and equality. These structures hold settings to account and give service users a route to redress when standards slip.

How should I approach the AS 1 portfolio?

Choose a real or realistic setting early and stick with it. Define each value of care and each service-user right, then apply it to that setting with specific, believable examples (such as providing an interpreter, securing records, or offering choice over daily routines). Explain how each example raises the quality of the service user's experience and how the setting guards against discrimination and abuse of power. Reference the relevant codes, standards and regulator to show wider understanding.

Northern IrelandHealth & Social Care

CCEA A-Level Health and Social Care AS 1 Promoting Quality Care: values of care, service-user rights and anti-discriminatory practice

Q: What rights do service users have?

Recognised service-user rights include the right to be respected and treated with dignity, to be treated equally and not discriminated against, to privacy, to be protected from harm and abuse, to have needs and preferences met, to access information about themselves, to communicate in a preferred way, and to be consulted and make choices. Each right carries a matching responsibility on the care worker to deliver it in practice.

A guide to the internally assessed CCEA AS 1 Promoting Quality Care unit. Covers the values of care and care value base, the rights of service users and responsibilities of workers, anti-discriminatory practice, the imbalance of power and how codes, standards and regulation maintain quality care.

Generated by Claude Opus 4.814 min readCCEAUpdated 2026-06-16

Reviewed by: AI editorial process; not yet individually human-reviewed

Jump to a section

What this unit demands
The care value base
Rights and responsibilities
The imbalance of power
How quality is maintained
How this unit is assessed
Check your knowledge

What this unit demands

AS 1 Promoting Quality Care is the ethical foundation of CCEA A-Level Health and Social Care. It establishes the values that everything else in the qualification rests on: how service users should be treated, what they are entitled to, and how settings deliver and protect quality. Because it is internally assessed through a portfolio rather than a written examination, success depends less on timed recall and more on applying the values of care and service-user rights to a chosen setting with concrete, realistic detail.

This guide sets out the content of the unit and how to build a strong portfolio. The matching overview dot-point page applies the same ideas with worked examples.

The care value base

The care value base is the set of principles guiding all care work. For health and social care the values are promoting equality and diversity, maintaining confidentiality, and promoting individuals' rights and beliefs. For early years settings, additional emphasis falls on the welfare of the child, keeping children safe, partnership with parents and families, encouraging learning and development, valuing diversity, and confidentiality. These values turn adequate care into quality care.

Rights and responsibilities

Service users hold rights to be respected and treated with dignity, to be treated equally and not discriminated against, to privacy, to be protected from harm and abuse, to have needs and preferences met, to access information about themselves, to communicate in a preferred way, and to be consulted and make choices. Each right places a matching responsibility on the care worker to deliver it. Workers meet these through person-centred care, anti-discriminatory practice, confidentiality and safeguarding.

The imbalance of power

A recurring theme is the imbalance of power between worker and service user. The worker holds knowledge, controls routines and gatekeeps resources, so power sits with them. Quality care redresses this by empowering service users, offering choice and consultation, enabling independence, and providing advocacy where someone cannot speak for themselves.

How quality is maintained

Quality is upheld by codes of practice, national minimum standards, regulation and inspection (the RQIA in Northern Ireland), staff training and vetting (AccessNI checks), complaints procedures and written policies. These give service users routes to redress and hold settings to account.

How this unit is assessed

AS 1 is assessed by an internally assessed portfolio (controlled assessment), centre-marked and moderated by CCEA. There is no terminal written paper for this unit.

Check your knowledge

State the three values of care for health and social care. (3 marks)
Explain why early years settings need additional values of care. (2 marks)
Describe two rights of service users. (2 marks)
Explain what is meant by the imbalance of power in a care relationship. (2 marks)
Name the body that regulates care services in Northern Ireland. (1 mark)
Explain one way a setting can redress an imbalance of power. (2 marks)

Solutions

Q1: Promoting equality and diversity; maintaining confidentiality; promoting individuals' rights and beliefs.
Q2: Children are dependent and vulnerable, so the values add a focus on the welfare and safety of the child and partnership with parents, reflecting the duty to protect those who cannot fully protect themselves.
Q3: The right to be treated with dignity and respect; and the right to be protected from harm and abuse (safeguarding). (Confidentiality, equal treatment and choice are also valid.)
Q4: The worker holds knowledge, control of routines and access to resources that the service user depends on, so power is unequal and sits with the worker.
Q5: The Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority (RQIA).
Q6: By offering genuine choice and consultation over care, enabling independence, or providing access to an advocate so the service user's voice is heard.

Sources & how we know this

CCEA GCE Health and Social Care specification — CCEA (2016)