Joint inspections of services for children and young people at risk of harm

At the request of Scottish Ministers, between 2021 and 2025 the Care Inspectorate led on joint inspections of services for children and young people at risk of harm.

The remit of these joint inspections was to consider the effectiveness of services for children and young people up to the age of 18 at risk of harm. The inspections looked at the differences community planning partnerships are making to the lives of children and young people at risk of harm and their families.

These joint inspections aimed to provide assurance on the extent to which services, working together, could demonstrate that:

  • Children and young people are safer because risks have been identified early and responded to effectively.
  • Children and young people’s lives improve with high-quality planning and support, ensuring they experience sustained, loving and nurturing relationships to keep them safe from further harm.
  • Children and young people and families are meaningfully and appropriately involved in decisions about their lives. They influence service planning, delivery and improvement.
  • Collaborative strategic leadership, planning and operational management ensure high standards of service delivery.

We will shortly be producing an overview report. You can access individual inspection reports here.


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More details about our approach

Our inspections will report on the experiences of children and young people subject to compulsory supervision orders living at home with their parents. When we use the term ‘children and young people’ in this page we are referring to this group. This includes services for children and young people under the age of 18 years at the point of involvement with services within the last two years.  When we say a child living at home with a parent, we mean a child who has lived at home with at least one parent within the last two years. When we refer to parents we mean birth or adoptive parents and parent’s partners where they are not the child’s parent but reside with them and have a significant caring role.  We do not mean formal carers for example a foster carer who provides respite care or a kinship carer.

Through a joint scrutiny approach, we will consider the experiences and views of children and young people. We will explore how well services are directed and delivered to ensure children and young people are supported to live at home within their parents to achieve positive outcomes.

The scope and timeline of the joint inspections

  • Our legislative basis is the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010, section 115.
  • We undertake joint inspections with scrutiny partners, including Healthcare Improvement Scotland, Education Scotland, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland and young inspection volunteers. At times, we also involve associate assessors in our joint inspections.
  • We will identify up to four local authority areas in 2025/2026 in which to conduct our joint inspections.
  • The joint inspections will have a multi-agency scrutiny approach, liaising with community planning partners and corporate parenting partners responsible and accountable for this area of practice.
  • We will take a scoping approach to our joint inspections, that is, learning iteratively as the inspection progresses to determine the best ways to seek the evidence required.
  • We will conduct each joint inspection over a 12-week period, publishing one final report per local authority area.
  • We will focus on a retrospective two-year period and scrutinise the impact of services for children and young people in that period of time.

The principles of the joint inspections

We will use a rights-based approach in the joint inspections, embedding the experiences of children and young people at the heart of planning, implementation and analysis of findings. Our joint inspections are underpinned by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. For example, we respect the right of children and young people to have their views heard by making participation of children, young people and families a core element of our approach. Our approach and design will reflect what children and families have told us matter the most to them, as encapsulated within the Promise.

We will consider the planning and progress that has been made by children’s services partnerships as they seek to keep The Promise. We will consider the five Promise Foundations and related priorities of family, care, voice, people and scaffolding which enable children to grow up loved, safe and respected.

Our approach and framework

Our approach will be proportionate to the evidence required, with a hybrid model of on-site and virtual activities. Our methods will include gathering information from local partnerships about the relevant services they provide and reviewing publicly available documents.

We will use the quality framework for children and young people in need of care and protection (November 2022). This framework is informed by the principles of the European Framework for Quality Management (EFQM) model which incorporates three tenets:

  • Direction – clarity of purpose and strategy to achieve aims
  • Execution – implementation of the strategy through delivery
  • Results – what results have been achieved

Our approach to reporting

We will publish one written report following each joint inspection. We are committed to improving accessible reporting specific to children and young people, this will involve further consultation with our young inspection volunteers.

In our report we will consider three key lines of enquiry. We will evaluate four quality indicators on our six-point scale. These are:

  • Quality indicator 2.1: Impact on children and young people
  • Quality indicator 5.3: Care planning, managing risk and effective intervention
  • Quality indicator 5.4: Involving individual children, young people and families
  • Quality indicator 9.2: Leadership of strategy and direction

Resources

Our resources pages are currently being updated to provide information for community planning partnerships (CPP) about the process for the joint inspections of services for children and young people subject to compulsory supervision orders living at home with their parents.


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How we do it

Our inspections last for a number of months. We collect information about the area before we visit it. This helps us to understand what happens there and what is affecting the way that services are being provided.  

During the inspection, a team of inspectors from the Care Inspectorate, Education Scotland, HM Inspectorate of Constabulary Scotland and Health Improvement Scotland will:

  • speak with the staff
  • speak with children and young people and listen to their views
  • speak with parents
  • read information about the children and young people.

This gives us the chance to find out if children, young people and their families are getting the help that they need and if services are making a difference to their lives. What individual people tell us during inspection is confidential. Our reports do not include any information about them or their family, or anything that could identify them. However, we do have a duty to pass on information if there are concerns about someone’s safety.

We have surveys for children, young people and families and we use and safeguard the data gathered from these in the same way as we do with what you tell us in person. Our approach to participation during inspection reflects the importance we give to hearing from children and young people. We also have a staff survey which also enables us to maximise the feedback we get from those working across services. 

After our inspection, we publish a report on our website about what we found for the area. Our inspection reports set out what works well and what could improve. We expect the community planning partnership to take action on any recommendations we make for improvements.


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How you can get involved if you have experience of using services

What you think really matters. If we are inspecting your area, and you have experience of services, you may want to speak to us about the help that you have been getting.

We will offer a range of ways for you to give us feedback. As well as a survey we will arrange one-to-one discussions and group meetings. Our one-to-one discussions can take place in person, or we can contact you by phone or other ways such as Facetime or MS Teams.

If you give us information anonymously, we may not be able to get in contact with you if you raise concerns about your own safety or the safety of anyone else. If you have such concerns, we would encourage you to contact your local authority and ask for their child protection or adult protection service. You can also contact Childline on 0800 1111. If we have any concerns about the safety of individuals, we will share this with protection agencies in the relevant area.

Our inspection team also includes young inspection volunteers. These are young people aged 18 – 26 with experience of care services who help us with our inspections. If you are a young person, you can choose to speak with one of them and you can have someone to support you when you meet them. If you are a young person and want to know more about becoming a young inspection volunteer or how to get involved, click here to find out more. Information for children, young people and parents.


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Overview

As part of our strategic scrutiny plan for this year we will work with scrutiny partners to take a more focused look at the experiences and outcomes of children and young people subject to compulsory supervision orders and living at home with parents.

One of the foundations of the Promise is about supporting families to stay together and emphasis is placed on the importance of providing timely support to ensure children can stay in their families wherever it is safe to do so. By considering the experiences of children who are subject to compulsory supervision orders and living at home with their parents, we aim to better understand what is helping to improve outcomes for children and young people and what is getting in the way. 

Children and young people have told us about the importance of being able to experience sincere human contact and enduring relationships. Our approach therefore looks carefully at how well services and systems are organised so that children and young people can experience continuity in their care and develop and sustain lasting relationships. Our inspections also consider whether legal measures are being used appropriately to achieve security and stability for children. 

Staff who are well trained and who feel valued and empowered are more likely to be able to provide high quality services for children and young people. We therefore explore how well staff are supported to carry out their task. 

We know that partners recognise that assessment and planning are critical to ensure the safety of, and improving outcomes for, children and young people. However, we also know that performance in assessment and planning is not as consistently strong across the country as it needs to be. We will look to see if robust quality assurance and high quality reflective supervision are in place to support these important processes.

Strong collaborative leadership is essential and challenging in the context of providing high quality public services in an integrated landscape. We consider the effectiveness of leadership and how well leaders can demonstrate what difference they are making to the lives of children and young people.  

Read more about the focus of these inspections here.


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