The Guide
The Guide provides information for community planning partnerships (CPP) about the process for the joint inspection of services for children and young people at risk of harm. This includes services for children under the age of 18 years at the point of involvement with services. It should be read in conjunction with the quality framework for children and young people in need of care and protection (QIF).
The Guide contains a number of hyperlinks. These may be to references within the guide itself or to external sources. If partnerships being inspected have any queries about any part of The Guide they should consult with their inspection lead, or with their link inspector if not being currently inspected.
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Care surveys: How good is your care?
We are developing care surveys that reflect the Health and Social Care Standards. These will replace the old care standards questionnaires (CSQs) and link to our quality frameworks for care services.
We want to include the views of people who experience care, as well as their relatives, friends and carers in our scrutiny and improvement work and these will surveys help us do that.
They have a stronger emphasis on hearing about people’s experiences and outcomes and we hope this will enable more people to tell us about their care. We want people to be able to engage much more meaningfully with our inspections, in the way that suits them best. We designed these surveys to support this in a flexible way.
Online surveys (Microsoft Forms)
Throughout the year, we will send electronic survey links directly to managers of care services. We ask that these links are sent to the relevant key people within your service who use and support you to deliver care. We anticipate this will be an annual request.
There are four different electronic surveys:
- people who experience care
- service staff
- relatives and carers
- and, where appropriate, external professionals such as district nurses and G.P.s.
We appreciate some people, especially those experiencing care and some relatives and carers, may need support to provide their feedback and we appreciate any support you can provide to enable them to participate. Advocacy services in your local area may be able to support this.
Please email these survey links to the appropriate groups of people. If your staff are supporting people to complete the surveys, then please give them the most appropriate link for the person giving the feedback.
People who experience care
People who experience care can complete the survey by:
- completing the form that will be issued to the service and then returning this in the freepost envelope provided.
- completing the survey online.
We have also produced sentiment and response cards to support people in care homes to complete the survey. The images on the sentiment cards mirror the first section and the response cards help people to be clearer in their answers to the questions in the survey.
People can choose to do as much of the survey as they are able to. Some people may wish to focus on the first page with images that describe how they feel, and others may be happy to complete the whole survey.
How all services will receive batch surveys
We will send a batch of care surveys and freepost envelopes.
For care homes, there will also be a set of sentiment and response cards sent to your service with the first batch of surveys.
Downloadable version
Services can also download a copy of the survey from the links below. Please make sure you quote the services registration number (CS number) and name of service on the front page of the document so we can send this to the correct inspector. The CS number will be on the services registration certificate which is displayed in the service.
- Care homes for adults and older people survey download (PDF)
- Care at home/housing support survey download (PDF)
Once completed please return these to:
Care Inspectorate
Compass House
11 Riverside Drive
Dundee
DD1 4NY
If you need the survey in an alternative format, such as a different language or easy read, please give us a call on 0345 600 9527 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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Early learning and childcare profiles
Early learning and childcare profiles, by local authority
We have created early learning and childcare local profiles to assist local authority planning for the expansion of early learning and childcare in Scotland.
These profiles are a valuable source of information about daycare of children services in local authority areas. They include information about: number of services and capacity; funded places; trends in children registered; registered children by age; service quality; sessions and opening times; SIMD and urban/rural classification; staffing and vacancies; population estimates and projections; and an early learning and childcare service list of the area.
The profiles focus on those services that provide early learning and childcare (children and family centres, nurseries and playgroups) while our early learning and childcare statistics publication also provides information about out of school care, holiday playschemes and creches.
We welcome any feedback, queries and ideas for improvement for these profiles; please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Early Learning and Childcare Profiles, as at 31 December 2016
Early Learning and Childcare Profiles, as at 31 December 2017
Early Learning and Childcare Profiles, as at 31 December 2018
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Medicine waste in care homes
The Care Inspectorate worked with colleagues in NHS Tayside, Scottish Care, Community Pharmacy Tayside and other Pharmacy organisations to reduce inappropriate medicine waste in care homes. Co-production between these organisations resulted in all agreeing a new protocol to ensure only appropriate waste was collected. The project has been successful and we have received positive qualitative feedback from care home managers and pharmacy staff.
Letter sent to care homes in September 2016
Watch our clip below to find out more.
If you need any help or advice in relation to this project please feel free to contact either your community pharmacist or any one of the following individuals:
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Duty of Candour
The new duty of candour came into effect on 1 April. It affects all health, social work and care services except childminders. It means that services must take specific steps to carry out their duty of candour when a serious adverse event happens. They will need to let the people affected know, offer to meet with them, and apologise. This is an important part of being open with people who experience care, and also learning from things that go wrong.
Starting from April 2019, care services and social work services must, by law, produce a short annual report showing the learning from their duty of candour incidents that year, publish it, and notify us that it has been published. That means the first annual report services produce will cover the period April 2018 to April 2019.
Regulations and guidance about the duty of candour process have been issued by the Scottish Government and you can find it here. It has also issued a guidance letter, which you can read here. An online learning module is available now. This explains more about the duty of candour and helps services and their staff understand their obligations. We strongly encourage services and their staff to undertake this module here.
We have included a question in our notification forms, “does this incident trigger the duty of candour?” This allows us to collect data on how the duty is being implemented and help embed awareness.
The first annual duty of candour reports will be due after April 2019 and it is important that services plan ahead. Even if there are no incidents to which the duty applied, a short report will still be required, as it must contain information about staff training on the duty of candour.
For social work services, we will ask local authority chief social work officers to notify us that they have published a duty of candour report after 6 April 2019.
For care services, we will amend future annual returns, to ask services if they have published a duty of candour report.
From April 2019, we may ask to review services’ duty of candour reports or examine them as part of our overall scrutiny of care services.
Our role in developing the reporting and monitoring
The Scottish Government asked the Care Inspectorate to chair a small working group looking at how the reporting should take place, and what kind of monitoring should happen.
The group comprised key representatives from health and social care and was chaired by the Executive Director of Strategy and Improvement at the Care Inspectorate. It concluded its work in February 2017.
It made a series of recommendations and you can read the report here. For regulated services, the group recommended that the Care Inspectorate and Healthcare Improvement Services should try to integrate the reporting and monitoring into existing notification processes, to make it simple for providers.
The group recommended that health boards and social work departments should be free to select the best way to record information, and provided a series of template reports showing how annual reports should be made.
The Scottish Government responded to the report and you can read its response here. For more information on the duty of candour, there is lots of helpful information on the Scottish Government website here.
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