This document describes the Care Quality Commission's new approach to regulating, inspecting and rating hospices where people stay and community based hospice services, including those for children. Within hospice services there are strong elements of healthcare as well as social care needs. When hospices are inspected, the Commission will make sure that the knowledge and skills of our teams are able to recognise and assess the diversity of people’s needs and how they are met by the service.The Commission intends that inspectors will use their professional judgement, supported by objective measures and evidence, to assess whether services are safe, effective, caring, responsive to people’s needs and well-led. The Commission will rate services to help people compare them and to highlight where care is outstanding, good, requires improvement or is inadequate.