Link inspectors and relationship managers
The Care Inspectorate provides a designated link team for local authorities and strategic partnerships. This is because there are multiple services of different types and a need for regular planned contact to discuss emerging issues across the breadth of their work. Link teams consist of a strategic inspector, who is responsible for scrutiny carried out at authority or strategic partnership level; a relationship manager for adult care services and complaints about care services; and a relationship manager for children’s care services and registration.
Relationship managers also provide a designated point of contact for larger providers who operate multiple services.
Managers responsible for services for children also link to each of the six regional collaboratives that have now been established across the country.
Named strategic link inspectors and relationship managers can be found here.
Find information on the link inspector role for council and partnership staff here.
You can get information about the link inspector for a particular local authority area by e-mailing the strategic support team at StrategicTeam@careinspectorate.gov.scot
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eForms guidance
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Health and Social Care Standards
On 1 April 2018, Scotland's Health and Social Care Standards came into effect, replacing the National Care Standards. The Care Inspectorate is required, by law, to consider the Health and Social Care Standards when making decisions during our inspections and other scrutiny and improvement work.
We encourage services to refer to these when planning and delivering care.
Over time, the Care Inspectorate is testing and evaluating different ways to carry out its inspections of care services against the new Standards, starting with care homes for older people in summer 2018.
As part of implementing the new Health and Social Care Standards, the Care Inspectorate reviewed the adult to child ratios in early learning and childcare (ELC) settings and issued guidance. This reflects the ratios that existed under the previous National Care Standards, with some additional advice included within the guidance. The guidance will be reviewed in May 2019.
Care Inspectorate report on Health and Social Care Standards implementation
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Continuing care for young people
We have been supporting the Staying Put agenda since 2013 and our role as corporate parents under the Children and Young people (Scotland) Act 2014 includes supporting young people moving from care to adulthood and independence.
We have updated our rules for adult placement services, with changes to fees and combined service status. These changes support young people to remain in their family placement and support providers.
Where a fostering service and an adult placement service operate as one service solely in order to support young people who have been cared for in the family on a fostering basis and who now wish to remain with the same family on a continuing care basis, this will be treated as one service, for the purposes of fees. The level for application and continuation fee will be set at the fostering agency service level. (‘Solely in order to support young people who have been cared for in the family on a fostering basis’ means that the adult placement service does not provide throughcare or aftercare.)
This supports the legislation which states that the accommodation and service should be the same for the young person as they move from being a looked after child to continuing care. On this basis, we are able to treat the services as one. This will mean one fee and one inspection, with a single report published under both categories on our website.
The updated guidance for care services, which includes the policy statement and guidance for staff is available here.
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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.
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