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 and other scrutiny partners will:
- speak with the staff
- speak with children and young people and listen to their views
- speak with parents and carers
- 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 in all roles.
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.
Read more about the way we are approaching these joint inspections and the methods we will be using.
Information for young people and families
Who is this information for?
This information is for young people and their family members who have agreed to speak to us or complete a survey as part of our review of services for care experienced young people. Where we talk about young people we are talking about those who are care experienced. This term includes all categories of care as young people approach adulthood and are being supported to either move on or continue to be cared for in a place of their choice.
What is this review about?
The purpose of the review is to find out how services are supporting young people when they are leaving care and ensuring that their rights are being upheld. These services are helping young people when they are making plans for leaving care and after they have moved on. They may be supporting you with housing, with your health or in relation to education or employment. A team from the Care Inspectorate are carrying out this review and we want to hear from people with recent lived experience of leaving care.
Why have I been asked for my views?
People who work with you feel that you could make a valuable contribution to the review. We want to listen to your views about whether you have received the help you need and any difference this has made to your life. Hearing the views and opinions of young people and family members is the most important part of our review.
Do I have to take part?
No, taking part in the review is not compulsory. We strongly recommend that you chat with a keyworker, your social worker, or any other trusted adult before consenting.
How will I share my views with the review team?
If you agree to take part in the review there are two ways in which you may have been invited to share your views: directly with a member of the review team or by completing a survey. In both we will be asking questions to help us fully understand your experience, whether you received the support you needed and the impact of any support received.
Sharing your views directly with a member of the team
If this is the way you have been asked to take part arrangements will be made for a member of the review team to meet you at a time and in a place which suits you. This can be done in person, or we can arrange an online meeting or a phone call. You can be supported by people you know if this is your preference. The questions we will be asking you, have been developed in consultation with care experienced young people.
Completing a survey (young people only)
This will be shared with you by a worker who knows you and they will ensure that you have the help you need to complete the survey and we would encourage you to speak with them if completing the survey raises any issues for you. Your response is anonymous. Care experienced young people were involved in designing the survey. You can change your mind and end the meeting or stop the survey at any time.
What will I be asked about?
We will ask you about your views about any support and help that you have had. We want to know about whether you have been involved in decisions that affect you and your family. We also want to ask you about how your rights have been respected. We will not ask you to share your personal information with us.
What will you do with the things I tell you?
- We will use what you say to help us work out what services are doing well and what needs to change.
- What you say to us is private and we won’t use your name or identify you or share any of your personal details.
- The only time we will tell others about something you say is if we are worried for your safety or the safety of someone else.
- We will take some notes during the interview. These notes will not contain personal information and we will not share these notes with others. We will store our notes securely and destroy them at the end of the review.
- We have rules about how we keep your information private. You can find our core privacy notice here. We will write a report in November 2024 and we will have other ways of sharing what services are doing well and what needs improve.
Where can I find out more information?
You can find out more information from our webpage. If you have any questions about taking part please speak to the person who gave you this form.
Thank you for taking part in our review.
You can download the information on this page in PDF format here.
Inspection during Covid-19
Covid-19 inspection safety precautions for early learning and childcare services including childminders (Added 29 April 2021)
We are committed to carrying out our inspections safely, and we take our responsibility to the welfare of children and staff in your service very seriously. We have worked with Public Health Scotland to ensure our inspection process is as safe as it possibly can be.
All our staff have had infection prevention and control training that includes minimising the risk of contact and the safe use of personal protective equipment (PPE). Our inspectors are undertaking twice weekly testing and are required to have a negative lateral flow test before visiting a service. If the test is positive, they self-isolate and arrange to undertake a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test. No inspector will visit a service if they have any of the recognised symptoms of Covid-19.
We have amended our processes to minimise the time we need to spend in your service carrying out key tasks. We will carry out some activities remotely, such as interviews with staff or parents.
When our inspectors are in your service, they will maintain physical distancing from your staff and each other and wear moisture resistance face masks. You may see your inspector change these across the time they are in your service. They will wash their hands regularly and carry supplies of hand sanitiser where hand washing may be more difficult, such as in outdoor areas.
Inspectors will limit the items they bring into your service and will use their tablets to record and photograph information rather than taking paper copies.
Inspections of services for children and young people (except childminders) (Added 27 April 2021)
We suspended our normal inspection programme in March 2020 in response to Scottish Government national restrictions on movement put in place to help suppress the spread of Covid-19. We maintained close contact with services across the country, providing advice and guidance to help providers continue to deliver services through a time of unprecedented challenge.
During the autumn and winter we recommenced our inspection programme on a revised basis. We carried out as much activity as possible remotely, using digital and other means. We undertook assurance activity to respond proportionately to any concerns and continued to make visits to services wherever we judged it was necessary to gain assurance about children’s wellbeing.
We have now revised our inspection priorities for 2021-22. They will be determined taking into account a number of factors including:
- intelligence which gives us cause for concern or suggests there are areas requiring further exploration. Intelligence may come from notifications or from a failure to comply with the notification system, and from complaints or relevant information provided by other bodies;
- inspection history, particularly where the last inspection identified significant areas for improvement and where we now need to assess the extent to which improvements have been made;
- services which have not been inspected since registration with the Care Inspectorate;
- inspection frequency timescales.
For all high and medium risk services, we aim to carry out on-site visits to engage in fieldwork, gain assurance about the wellbeing of children and young people and assess how their needs are being met. We will work sensitively with services to ensure this is done safely, in a way which reduces risks for everyone. Inspection feedback will continue to be provided through a virtual meeting.
For all other services, we will continue to carry out as much activity as possible remotely, using digital and other means. We are asking services for continued cooperation and support in providing documentary evidence timeously and facilitating conversations between inspectors and children, families, staff and other stakeholders. This helps us to complete inspections without undue delays. We will continue to make visits to services wherever we judge it is necessary to gain assurance about children’s wellbeing.
All of our inspectors have received Covid training to help keep everyone in the service and themselves as safe as possible. They undertake regular lateral flow tests and make appropriate use of PPE and face masks.
We will be flexible and will amend plans as necessary in the light of changing circumstances locally and nationally.
Operating an early learning and childcare setting (including out of school care and childminders) during Covid-19 (Updated 12 August 2020)
We have developed ‘Key Question 5’, a self-evaluation resource and tool which asks you to evaluate how well you are supporting children and families during Covid-19. The aim of this resource is to enable settings to gather information and continually evaluate their progress in supporting staff, children and families to have confidence in the provision of ELC by specifically evidencing how they have implemented the national guidance for Covid-19, while ensuring positive outcomes for children. This is the only Key Question we expect ELC providers (including out of school care and childminders) to compete. This key question will sit alongside our Quality Framework for Early Learning and Childcare when this is published later this year (which will include Key Questions 1-4).
We encourage you to complete the ‘self-evaluation tool’. The tool asks you to take account of performance data when evaluating your service. This will be individual to your service. It may include how you communicate with families or other settings where there are blended placements. It may also be some examples of evidence which you wish to include within the tool e.g. Supporting evidence of how you have implemented and reviewed the national guidance relevant to your service:
- Guidance for early learning and childcare services
- Guidance for childminding services
- Guidance for school age childcare services
- Guidance for fully outdoor childcare services
Inspectors will request the completed self-evaluation from providers on a risk and sampling basis. Please do not send this to us until requested. This will not be before 10 August 2020. However, we may undertake other scrutiny activities in settings before this date. Read more about this here.
Covid-19 Scrutiny Assessment Tool (SAT) (Added 30 July 2020)
The Covid-19 Scrutiny Assessment Tool (SAT) is a trigger tool developed by the Care Inspectorate to identify indicators of potential concerns in care homes.
From 14 August this will replace the current Risk Assessment Rating (RAD) for all Care Homes (Adults, Older People, Children and Young People). Inspectors will begin this process from 30 July.
A list of questions that the inspectors will answer when completing the SAT in the RMS system can be found here.
This is for service provider’s information only.
The SAT is not a risk assessment in the same way that the RAD was but will support us to identify what level of support and scrutiny is appropriate for a service taking account their current circumstances.
In developing the Covid-19 SAT we considered specific information relevant to the current Covid-19 pandemic. It is based on what our intelligence has so far identified as being key indicators or concerns within services to allow us to consider where additional support and/or scrutiny may be required.
The Covid-19 SAT is based on a Scrutiny Assessment Tool we have developed and tested that included information from our enforcement review. The release of the new tool was delayed due to the pandemic, we are planning to release the full SAT for all service types later in the year.
Key question 7 for children and young people residential services (Added 6 July 2020)
We have developed key question 7 for children and young people residential services.
Where there are concerns relating to Covid-19 in a residential childcare setting this key question is to be used as part of our scrutiny.
Where there are concerns not relating to Covid-19, areas from the existing quality framework will be used as a basis of our scrutiny work.
New key question for care home inspections (Added 10 June 2020)
In order to robustly assess care home arrangements to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic, our inspections are placing particular focus on infection prevention and control, personal protective equipment and staffing in care settings.
We have developed Key Question 7 to augment our quality framework for care homes for older people and our quality framework for care homes for adults. We have done this to meet the duties placed on us by the Coronavirus (Scotland) (No. 2) Act and subsequent guidance that we must evaluate (grade) infection prevention and control and staffing.
This means we will carry out targeted inspections that are short, focused and carried out with colleagues from Health Improvement Scotland and Health Protection Scotland, to assess care and support for people experiencing care and support during the Covid-19 pandemic. We will continue to put the wellbeing for people experiencing care at the heart of our inspections.
Inspections
Infection prevention and control (IPC) standards published
Healthcare Improvement Scotland has published new IPC standards that apply to health and adult social care settings
The standards will act as a key component in the drive to reduce the risk of infections in health and social care in Scotland. They will support services to quality assure their IPC practice and approaches, and the IPC principles set out in the National Infection Prevention and Control Manual.
The Care Inspectorate will take account of the standards in our inspection and regulation of adult and older people’s care services including care homes.
The standards can be found here.
Our approach to inspection and self-evaluation
In consultation with the social care sector, we have developed a self-evaluation and quality framework model based on the Scottish Government’s Health and Social Care Standards. We have used this model to develop a suite of quality frameworks for different service types.
Our inspectors use quality frameworks to evaluate the quality of care during inspections and improvement planning.
All our frameworks are available to download from the publications and statistics area or on The Hub.
The frameworks replace our previous practice of inspecting against themes and statements. Inspectors will look select a number of quality indicators from a number of key questions to look at.
Framework structure
The frameworks better reflect the Health and Social Care Standards and provides more transparency about what we expect.
They set out key questions about the difference a care service makes to people’s wellbeing, and the quality of the elements that contribute to that. These include:
- How well do we support people’s wellbeing?
- How good is our leadership
- How good is our staff team?
- How good is our setting?
- How well is our care and support planned?
Under each key question, there are three or four quality indicators, covering specific areas of practice. Each quality indicator has illustrations of what ‘very good’ quality would look like, and what ‘weak’ quality would look like. These illustrations are drawn from the Health and Social Care Standards but are not checklists or definitive descriptions. They are designed to help people understand the level of quality we are looking for.
A sixth question, ‘What is our overall capacity for improvement?’ is included in the framework to help care services in planning their improvement journey.
Each quality indicator includes a scrutiny and improvement toolbox. This includes examples of how we might evidence the quality of care provided. It also contains links to practice documents that will help services in their own improvement journey.
Key questions added as a result of Covid-19
In order to robustly assess arrangements to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic, our inspections are placing particular focus on infection prevention and control, wellbeing and staffing in care settings.
We have developed a key question to augment our frameworks. We have done this to meet the duties placed on us by the Coronavirus (Scotland) (No. 2) Act and subsequent guidance that we must evaluate infection prevention and control and staffing.
This means carry out targeted inspections that are short, focused and carried out with colleagues from Health Improvement Scotland and Health Protection Scotland, to assess care and support during the Covid-19 pandemic. We will continue to put the wellbeing for people experiencing care at the heart of our inspections.
This additional key question has been added to our frameworks for:
- Care homes for children and young people and school care accommodation (special residential schools)
- Mainstream boarding schools and school hostels
- Secure accommodation
Self-evaluation
The quality frameworks help services evaluate themselves. Self-evaluation is central to continuous improvement. It enables care settings to reflect on what they are doing so they can recognise what they do well and identify what they need to do better. We have published a guide to self-evaluation to support services in their improvement journey and a range of toolkits to support services undertake self-evaluation.
Where can I find out more?
The quality frameworks and key question 7's (KQ7s), and our inspection leaflet gives more information.
Alternatively, you can contact your inspector, call us on 0345 600 9527 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Inspections overview
- Inspection types
- Inspection teams
- Inspection methodology
- Inspection activities
- Inspection reports
- Quality assurance
- Inspection governance
- Covid-19
Inspection types
Our specific inspection focus and programme at any one time is agreed with the Scottish Government and published in the Care Inspectorate’s Scrutiny, Assurance and Improvement Plan. We take a number of different approaches to inspection, designed to meet different scrutiny objectives. These include, but are not limited to:
Inspections and joint Inspections: inspections of individual local authorities or partnerships in relation to key priority areas. Local authorities are identified for inspection based on a combination of risk assessment and rotation of scrutiny activity.
Progress reviews: return visits to a local authority or partnership to check progress following a previous inspection and set of recommendations. Progress reviews are usually (but not always) carried out where the original inspection identified significant areas for improvement.
Thematic reviews/inspections: inspections carried out in a limited number of local authority or partnership areas to explore a particular area of policy or practice that is of national interest. These reviews may or may not evaluate the performance of individual authorities or partnerships but are primarily designed to explore the national picture relating to a given theme and make national recommendations.
Supported self-evaluations: we are always keen to support and encourage self-evaluation. We may at times work proactively with identified local authorities and partnerships to support and validate their self-evaluation of particular areas of activity.
Inquiries: this approach uses an abbreviated approach to explore a particular theme or issue across the country. It is usually designed as a discrete piece of work, carried out over a relatively short time to produce a quick report that provides insight into the key issues relating to the theme.
Inspection teams
Our inspection teams have an inspection lead with responsibility for effectively delivering and concluding the individual inspection. The lead is supported by a deputy lead and a team of inspectors drawn from the Care Inspectorate and relevant partner scrutiny bodies. Our inspections may be supported by associate assessors and people with lived experience (inspection volunteers). The administration and organisation of inspection activities is managed by a team of strategic support officers.
The size of an inspection team will be determined by the scope, methodology and planned length of the inspection. Sometimes, additional resources may be allocated for specific parts of the inspection. However, most inspections will have a core team of between six and 10 members.
How resources are deployed across the different activities of the inspection, and the timing of activities, is captured on a plan that we call the inspection footprint.
Inspection methodology
For each set of inspections, we develop a quality framework (QIF). The quality framework outlines what we expect the quality of the service provided to be. The frameworks we use in our strategic inspection work are based on the EFQM (European Foundation for Quality Management) excellence model, widely used by organisations for managing change and improving performance. The Health and Social Care Standards are woven throughout the quality indicators.
Overall, the QIF provides a model to support inspection. We examine:
- performance and the outcomes that services achieve for the children and adults who use them
- the processes that support service delivery
- the vision, leadership, management and planning of services.
The quality frameworks are also available to local authorities & partnerships for them to use for self-evaluation purposes.
Inspection activities
The activities carried out by inspection teams to gather information can differ across inspections. However, there are some activities which have been proven to consistently provide good information and are therefore used regularly as part of inspections. These include:
Information and communication
The local authority or partnership can expect to receive full information about the inspection.
Most inspections provide a written guidance document of some sort, explaining the various stages and activities of the inspection, along with timescales.
In most inspections, we ask the local authority or partnership to nominate a local co-ordinator to manage and co-ordinate the various activities for them.
Throughout the course of the inspection, there are pre-planned meetings between key members of the inspection team and the local authority or partnership. These may be called professional or partnership discussions. Their key functions are: for the inspection team to feedback on findings so far; for the local authority or partnership to reflect on those findings; for the parties to discuss arrangements and plans for the next phase of the inspection.
Self-evaluation
It is a priority for the Care Inspectorate to support local authorities and partnerships to evaluate their own progress. Most of our inspections ask the local authority or partnership to provide a position statement and supporting evidence at the beginning of the inspection to help inform the inspection team’s understanding and formulate lines of enquiry.
Talking to children and adults who use services
Understanding the experience of people who use social work and social care services is fundamental to inspection, and we use a range of methods to gather the views of both people and unpaid carers. These are likely to include surveys, interviews, events, focus groups, and a range of activities developed to support specific inspections.
Reviewing records
Reading the records of children and adults who use services (also known as file reading) is a rich source of evidence for the inspection teams and is a part of many inspections. It provides understanding of how processes work and gives a picture of how staff interact with people using services.
Support networks
As well as reading records, many inspections include further examination of the care and support journeys experienced by children and adults by meeting with the staff and other significant people who have been part of that journey. This means that inspectors are able to further explore questions that have arisen from reading case records.
Staff surveys
Many inspections include surveys issued to staff. The inspection team often requests the help of the local authority or partnership in distributing the survey and encouraging staff to respond. The arrangements for issuing the survey, and which staff should receive it, will be discussed with the inspection co-ordinator by the inspection lead and strategic support officer.
Interviews and focus groups with key stakeholders
Most inspections involve focus groups or interviews with key stakeholders, including staff, managers, senior leaders, representatives of other statutory and third sector organisations. Often this takes place towards the end of an inspection as it gives the inspection team a good opportunity to discuss themes and issues that have emerged during other inspection activities.
Inspection reports
Inspection teams use regular team meetings to identify and explore themes that emerge from inspection activities. We make sure that potential findings are triangulated and corroborated through a range of activities before accepting them.
Inspection reports for each strand of inspection activity are tailored to the requirements of that inspection, so there are differences between the reports produced by each strategic inspection team. There will also be differences in the reports produced by each team when they are working on different inspection themes.
However, in general, strategic inspection reports can be expected to contain:
- a summary of key findings and/or strengths and areas for improvement
- an analysis of the inspection findings based on the relevant quality framework
- some form of evaluation of the local authority or partnership’s performance – which may or may not have grades attached
- recommendations for action and/or improvement.
Quality assurance
We aim to achieve a high quality for all our work and want it to have maximum value for all our stakeholders and help to improve the experience of people who use services. To help us achieve this, each inspection programme has a range of quality assurance arrangements:
Each programme has arrangements for review of the inspection approach and methodology which take account of the learning from each inspection while balancing the need for consistency. A key source of learning is from post inspection questionnaires and feedback from inspection leads and team members. All strategic scrutiny teams are represented on a forum to discuss potential improvements to inspection methodology from experiences across the different workstreams and promote consistency wherever possible. When reading the records of people who use services during inspection, a proportion of the sample is double read to ensure consistency of evaluations and we provide training for all record readers.
At the reporting stage of our inspections, inspection leads present their inspection team’s findings and draft report to a ‘quality and consistency’ panel with representation from each partner scrutiny body for discussion and comment. Reports are then issued to the area inspected for an accuracy check before final editing and publication.
Information governance
Our approach to processing personal data is set out in full in our organisational privacy notice.
Covid-19
The Covid-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on social work and social care services across the country. Because of this, most of our strategic inspection work was paused between March 2020 and spring 2021. Since then, strategic inspections have recommenced with some adjustments to reflect the ongoing risks posed by covid-19 and the pressure on local authority and partnership services.
We continue to be responsive to the trends of the pandemic as we plan for and deliver inspection activities. We have also incorporated learning from the pandemic period in relation to our use of technology, and expect to be using a blend of onsite and distance approaches to carry out inspections moving forward.
Joint inspection of services for children and young people
What do we do?
In 2017, the Scottish Government’s child protection improvement programme set out a vision for a child protection system in Scotland that places the wellbeing of children at the heart of everything it does. Scottish Ministers asked the Care Inspectorate to work with scrutiny partners to take a more focused look at children and young people in need of care and protection.
Our joint inspections therefore take account of the experiences and outcomes of such children and young people by looking at the services provided for them by community planning partnerships in each local authority area. This includes the work of health visitors, school nurses, teachers, doctors, social workers, police officers and lots of other people who work with children, young people and their families.
What is our approach?
When we engaged with children and young people about the focus of inspections, their most important message to us was that children and young people should be enabled to experience sincere human contact and enduring relationships. They want to be able to build trust through consistent relationships with adults and they want to be supported to maintain contact with those people who are most important in their lives. Our approach therefore looks carefully at how well the system is organised to ensure that they can experience continuity in their care and develop and sustain lasting relationships.
We believe that staff who are well trained and supported, and who feel valued and empowered, are more likely to be able to provide high quality services for children and young people. We will therefore explore how well staff are valued, supported and equipped to carry out their task. We know from our inspection findings that partners recognise the critical importance of achieving high standards in assessment and planning to ensure the safety of, and improve 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 and we will look at the extent to which robust quality assurance and high quality reflective supervision are in place.
Our inspections will also consider the appropriate use of legal measures to achieve security and stability in the lives of vulnerable children. Strong collaborative leadership is essential within the challenging context of providing high quality public services in an integrated landscape. Inspections will include a focus on the role played by staff who work in adult services in protecting children and young people and supporting sustained positive change for them and their families.
We will continue to evaluate the effectiveness of collaborative leadership, including leadership of the child protection committee and its relationship with chief officers, and we will identify any barriers that affect continued improved performance. We will look at how well leaders can demonstrate what difference they are, together, making to the lives of children in need of protection and those for whom they are corporate parents.
We started the current round of joint inspections of services for children in need of care and protection in August 2018 and will continue to review and revise the approach over the course of these inspections.
How do 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 and other partner agencies visit the area over two separate weeks.
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. To do this we:
- speak with the staff
- speak with children and young people and listen to their views
- speak with parents and carers
- read information about the children and young people.
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.
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.
For more information about what happens during an inspection click here for The Guide.
How can you get involved?
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 Skype.
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.
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 a person to support you when you meet them. If you are a young person and want to know more about young inspection volunteers or how to get involved, click here to find out more.
Joint inspections
The joint inspections are undertaken by the Care Inspectorate’s strategic inspection team who sit within the Scrutiny and Assurance Directorate. Please click here to find out more information.
Joint inspections of adult support and protection
Background
Phase 1 of our programme of joint inspections of adult support and protection took place during 2020-2023. Twenty-five joint inspections were carried out, and individual partnership reports were published. An overview, summarising the findings in these reports was also published, and is available here. This shaped our subsequent phase 2 approach.
Phase 2
In June 2023, the Scottish Government asked the Care Inspectorate to lead further joint inspection work with our inspection partners including, Healthcare Improvement Scotland and His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland. This commenced on 1 August 2023 and is scheduled to conclude in July 2025, and blends scrutiny activity with improvement support. There has been close collaboration with adult protection partnerships throughout.
The programme provides assurance on the quality of adult support and protection services in Scotland and promotes improvement activity through the development of a quality indicator framework and supported self-evaluation. Phase 2 of the programme comprises four workstreams.
Workstream 1
The joint inspection of the six adult support and protection partnerships first inspected in 2017.
The first year of our phase 2 programme included reviewing the progress of the six adult protection partnerships that were subject to adult support and protection inspections in 2017/18. The joint inspection team used the inspection methodology employed in Phase 1. These inspections focused on key processes and strategic leadership.
This programme of inspections was completed in May 2024 and included the North Ayrshire, Highland, Dundee, Aberdeenshire, East Dunbartonshire and Midlothian partnerships. Individual reports of the inspections have been published and can be accessed using the links above.
A joint inspection of adult support and protection overview report took account of the key findings from these six reports. This was published and can be accessed here.
Workstream 2
Development of a multi-agency quality improvement framework (QIF) for adult support and protection partnerships in Scotland.
Design of the QIF was undertaken in collaboration with The Scottish Government National Implementation Group self-evaluation subgroup. Four consultation workshop events took place, to which representatives from all health and social care partnerships across Scotland were invited. This included events in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Dundee, as well as one online session. These were held to provide an opportunity for the sector to comment on, refine, and enhance the draft framework. The sessions were attended by approximately eighty-four delegates representing almost all Health and Social Care Partnerships and the feedback gathered was then used to inform the final document.
- A working group was established that included joint inspection partners and representation from the national implementation group.
- The working group took careful consideration of the views from people with lived experience to ensure it was trauma informed.
- A communication plan was designed and implemented and four well attended engagement sessions were arranged
- The joint inspection team undertook a ‘you said, we did’ exercise with the national implementation self-evaluation subgroup to review the key themes from the four engagement sessions. We refined the QIF following their feedback.
- The QIF was published on 15 October and can be accessed here.
- This document will be promoted widely across the sector after its launch at a series of national events.
- This includes a formal launch at the Aspire event that took place on 28 November 2024
- This framework will support partnerships multi-agency self-evaluation of their adult support and protection arrangements and is designed to lead to improvement in services.
Workstream 3
This review of progress activity provides assurance of improvement in those partnerships where areas of weakness outweighed strengths in phase 1. This programme involves the South Ayrshire, Moray, West Lothian, Edinburgh, Orkney, and Western Isles partnerships.
Our file reading tool had previously been updated to reflect the changes in methodology and take account of the Scottish Government revised code of practice for adult support and protection (July 2022).
Completed workstream 3 progress reviews include South Ayrshire, West Lothian, Edinburgh and Moray. Individual reports will be published in due course for all six partnerships.
In these progress reviews we are using the following evaluations to measure progress.
Minimal progress: Improvement is minimal. The partnership’s overall approach to improvement is not comprehensive or put into practice. Its deployment and implementation are limited. It has not embedded improvements or they are still at the planning stage. It does not communicate improvements effectively and they are not well understood by staff. It does not assess and review the effectiveness of its improvement progress.
Some progress: Evidence of some improvement. The partnership’s approach to improvement is moderate. Its implementation and deployment of improvements are structured. It is beginning to embed improvements in practice. It communicates improvements partially and staff understand them reasonably well. It has limited measures to evaluate and review impact and outcomes for adults at risk of harm. It periodically assesses and reviews its improvement methodology.
Significant progress: Significant improvement. The partnership’s approach to improvement is comprehensive and embedded. Its deployment of improvements is well structured, implemented and effective. It communicates improvements purposefully, and staff understand them fully. It has effective measures to evaluate and review impact and outcomes for adults at risk of harm. It continually assesses and refines its improvement methodology.
The joint inspection team will also be re-visiting the Renfrewshire partnership to complete their phase 1 inspection that was interrupted by Covid-19 restrictions coming into force in March 2020.
Workstream 4
The joint inspection of adult support and protection team aims to work with volunteer partnerships, using the quality improvement framework developed in workstream 2, to undertake a programme of supported self-evaluation. Our focus will be on quality illustration 5.7 and those cases where it is difficult to determine the three-point criteria. During phase 1 activity some partnerships had promising initiatives aimed at developing their early intervention, prevention, and trauma informed approaches to this complex group of adults at risk of harm. We will work jointly with partnerships to assess the strengths of these initiatives.
This is an opportunity for partnerships to work alongside the joint inspection team to develop and implement the methodology. We will share learning and promote a deeper understanding about self-evaluation approaches and its impact on improvement work.
We have invited all adult support and protection partnerships to formally express a confirmed interest in this opportunity week commencing Monday 11 November 2024. We will look to confirm the partnerships selected prior to the end of December 2024 and commence work with them in January 2025.
A communication and engagement plan will be put in place once we have identified the partnerships we will be working with.
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