Joint inspections of services for children and young people

Joint inspections of services for children and young people subject to compulsory supervision orders and living at home with parents

As part of our strategic scrutiny plan 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.  

Previous joint inspections

• Joint inspections of services for children and young people at risk of harm 2021-2025.
• Joint inspections of services for children and young people in need of care and protection: review of findings from the inspection programme 2018-2020
• Joint inspections of services for children and young people: a report on the findings of inspections 2014-16
• The Guide

Joint review of diversion from prosecution

In this joint review, we sought to assess the operation and impact of diversion from prosecution in Scotland. Working in partnership we provided an overview of diversion practice from a policing, prosecution and justice social work perspective, highlighted what was working well and explored any barriers to the more effective use of diversion.

The review was carried out by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland (HMICS), HM Inspectorate of Prosecution in Scotland (IPS), the Care Inspectorate, and HM Inspectorate of Prisons for Scotland (HMIPS) (the scrutiny partners).

We considered:

• the extent to which the police, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) and justice social work, alongside other community justice partners, shared a vision for diversion from prosecution and collaborated on a strategy for delivery, while respecting the important principle of independent prosecutorial decision-making
• the effectiveness of systems and processes that supported diversion from prosecution and the progress made in implementing the national guidelines on diversion
• the extent to which the impact of diversion was understood and the intended outcomes were being achieved

We considered the individual and collective roles that the justice partners play at the various stages in the diversion process:

• the Standard Prosecution Report (SPR)
• the decision to divert
• the referral to justice social work
• the suitability assessment and the response by COPFS
• the diversion intervention
• the completion report and the response by COPFS
• communication with the accused
• communication with the complainer.

In support of our review, we gathered evidence from a range of sources including:

• a review of relevant strategies, policies, guidance, procedures and other documentation relating to diversion from prosecution
• analysis of data on diversion
• a survey of all community justice partnerships in Scotland regarding the operation of diversion from prosecution in their local area
• extensive interviews with those involved or with an interest in the diversion process
• a review of cases in which an initial decision to divert the accused from prosecution had been taken by COPFS, as well as some cases in which diversion did not appear to have been considered.

We published a report of our findings in February 2023. The review report provides more detail on our methods and full details of our findings and recommendations.

Justice social work: Self-evaluation of performance, quality and outcomes

Aim 2 of the National Strategy for Community Justice is to “Ensure that robust and high-quality community interventions and public protection arrangements are consistently available across Scotland”. In relation to community sentences, there is an associated priority action to “Ensure that those given community sentences are supervised and supported appropriately to protect the public, promote desistence from offending and enable rehabilitation by delivering high quality, consistently available, trauma-informed services and programmes.”

Key to delivering on these intentions, and the overarching aim, is the ability of justice social work services to demonstrate that the supervision and support offered to those on community sentences is of a high quality. To develop an overview of what was working well and where improvement was required in this regard, the Care Inspectorate undertook a national review, using a self-evaluation approach between September 2024 and March 2025.

The review sought to:

• evaluate the extent to which justice social work services were able to evidence performance, quality and outcomes in relation to community-based sentences.
• explore the factors that impacted justice social work services’ ability to confidently and robustly demonstrate the effectiveness and impact of community support and supervision.

As part of this work, all 32 local authority justice social work services completed a structured self-evaluation in which they considered their current approaches to gathering and reporting on performance, quality and outcomes and the factors that were enabling or hindering this work.

Thereafter, we undertook a range of activities to validate the self-evaluations in six local authority justice services. This allowed us to better understand the strengths and challenges at a local level. The activities included:

• a review of documentary evidence referenced in the local authority self-evaluation
• focus groups and interviews with senior leaders, operational managers and staff
• focus groups and interviews with people on community sentences

We published a report of our findings in May 2025. The report contains more detail on the methods we used.

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 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.