Registration requirements for residential services and care workers for children and young people as they move into adulthood

Joint statement by the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) and the Care Inspectorate.

We’ve had some questions about the registration requirements for workers and services providing continuing care for young people over the age of 16 and under 26 years following the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act, Part 11 Continuing Care. We have considered the issue and decided not to change anything.

The Continuing Care legislation supports continuing care for young people beyond the age of 16 and into young adulthood and this may mean for some residential childcare services they are not only caring for children and young people but also for young adults.

The introduction of Continuing Care has raised questions about how staff and services should be registered with the SSSC and the Care Inspectorate, given that young people will move from childhood to adulthood, while being supported by the same workers and services.

The agreed approach is that there will be no registration changes to either the services registered by the Care Inspectorate or the individual workers registered with SSSC in respect of residential services. So, care homes for children and young people and school care accommodation services will continue to be registered with the Care Inspectorate as residential childcare services. Those working in these settings will also continue to be registered on the parts of the SSSC Register for childcare and residential school care so there will not be any changes to their registration.

Both the SSSC and the Care Inspectorate will expect services and staff providing care and support to young people under Continuing Care to have the skills and knowledge and the services to develop policies to reflect the specific needs of the group for which they are providing care and support.

This approach ensures that the appropriate degree of robust regulation is maintained without placing any extra requirement on workers or services, and supports the development of innovative services for young people to get the best support into their adult life. Legislative arrangements for the registration of foster care agencies and adult placement agencies are separate to this and the Care Inspectorate will issue guidance shortly on this point.

Why your annual returns are so important

This year’s annual returns have now closed. We would like to thank everyone who submitted their annual return to us by the deadline Sunday, 2 March 2025. The information you have provided will help us plan, inform and carry out our inspections and improvement work.

Why your annual returns are so important

Every year in January and February, we ask care service providers to complete an annual return. It asks for a great deal of information about your service and the people who use it. It is important to know why you are asked for this information, and what we do with it. 

First and foremost, the information you provide in the annual return helps us understand your service. This means inspectors are able to plan and prepare for effective inspections that are focused appropriately.

Not only is the annual return important for planning and focusing inspections, but the information you also give provides a national picture, which can help the us and other partner organisations in a number of ways.

Even inactive services must submit an annual return.

If a service was registered on or after 1 October 2024, it should try to complete an annual return this year. Although it is not mandatory for these services, any information supplied will be used by the Care Inspectorate and Scottish Government. The information entered this year will automatically appear in the December 2025 annual return and only information that has changed will need to be entered.

Benchmarks and comparisons for inspectors 

Inspectors can compare a service they are looking at with national averages to identify potential issues. For example, if the inspector is preparing to inspect a service with higher staff turnover than average, when they inspect, the inspector might look at the impact this could have had on the quality of care and outcomes for people using that service.

Publishing statistics

We also publish statistical reports of some of the annual returns data.  We also use the annual return data to inform many of our other publications such as:

• Early learning and childcare statistics 2023
• Fostering and adoption 2023/24 statistical bulletin

National policy makers (the Scottish Government) can use these summaries and publications to shape and evaluate national policies and providers can see how their service compares with other services.

Supporting improvement

The intelligence we gather through annual returns helps us target our improvement activity and support within social care. It is a great source of baseline data across a variety of health and wellbeing indicators which we use to identify, drive and track improvement, for example infection control, nutrition and the recruitment and retention of staff.  The data also helps us to identify trends and topics by both geographical area or service type, so that we can see where best to focus our improvement support work, for example, improvement workshops or new resources and guidance for care services across the sector.

Reducing duplication and sharing information

We also share information with other public bodies to reduce duplication and the costs of data collection for both the taxpayer and the people providing data.  For example, anonymised staffing information is shared with the Scottish Social Services Council, so they can develop intelligence about the workforce without having to collect additional data from care services.

If you need help accessing the annual return, you can call our contact centre on 0345 600 9527 or read our frequently asked questions (to follow).