Registering school holiday, activity and food provision programmes
Does your school holiday, activity and food provision programme need to be registered?
Services offered to children and families as part of school holiday, activity and food provision programmes may need to be registered with the Care Inspectorate. The information below relates to children and young people from primary school age and above.
It is an offence to operate a care service in Scotland without being registered with the Care Inspectorate and the Care Inspectorate is happy to provide advice.
For advice on registration, you can email our registration team: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Childcare service or school holiday, activity and food provision programme
Is the provision advertised as school holiday childcare?
If the answer is yes, then generally the service needs to be registered.
Is the service provided to enable/support parents to work, study or attend training?
If the answer is yes, it would be a childcare service and needs to be registered.
If the service is providing a school holiday club/activity club/playscheme/youth club that is activity based, then it needs to be promoted as such. It should not be promoted as providing childcare.
If you are solely providing an activity-based programme, then this does not need to be registered.
Mealtimes
Depending on the level of support the individual child needs at mealtimes, this could be considered as care, then the service would require to be registered.
Personal care
Do children need help with personal care such as going to the toilet, taking off or putting on appropriate clothing?
If the answer is yes, then the service requires to be registered.
Children with additional support needs
Do the children attending the service have additional support needs (ASN)?
If the answer is yes, then generally the service needs to be registered and the Care Inspectorate would need more information about what type of support children are being given.
Legislative definitions of types of services
It is an offence to operate a care service in Scotland without being registered with the Care Inspectorate.
Section 47 of the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010 defines the types of services that must be registered with the Care Inspectorate.
Day care of children service:
A “day care of children” service is described in paragraph 13 of Schedule 12 as “subject to paragraphs 14(b) to 17, a service which consists of any form of care (whether or not provided to any extent in the form of an educational activity), supervised by a responsible person and not excepted from this definition by regulations, provided for children, on premises other than domestic premises, during the day (whether or not it is provided on a regular basis or commences or ends during the hours of daylight).”
Regulations made under the Act, namely The Social Care and Social Work Improvement Scotland (Excepted Services) Regulations 2012 (SSI 2012/44) (“the Excepted Services Regulations”), restrict the definition of a day care of children service to those services which have as a primary purpose the provision of care to children.
Regulation 4 of the Excepted Services Regulations states “There is excepted from the definition of “day care of children” in paragraph 13 of schedule 12 to the Act any service unless its primary purpose is the provision of care to children”.
Support service:
A support service is defined by the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010 as
“a service provided, by reason of a person’s vulnerability or need (other than vulnerability or need arising by reason only of that person being of a young age), to that person or to someone who cares for that person by-
- a local authority;
- any person under arrangements made by a local authority;
- a health body; or
- any person if it includes personal care or personal support.
Consider whether the ‘vulnerability’ is solely through age. If it is and care is being provided and is provided for more than two hours, then consider if registration as a daycare of children service is more appropriate.
Consider if the ‘vulnerability’ is through some form of additional support need and ‘care’ is required. If it is, consider registering as a support service.
Already a registered provider with the Care Inspectorate
If you are already a registered childcare or support service provider, it might be possible to vary the conditions of your existing service. This is called a variation, as it is varying the existing conditions of your registration with the Care Inspectorate. You can ask for advice on this from our registration team or your inspector.
Get in touch
The Care Inspectorate is happy to provide guidance to support the development and registering of school holiday, activity and food provision programmes for children and families.
Please contact our contact centre on 0345 600 9527 or email Care Inspectorate enquiries at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
For advice on registration, you can email our registration team: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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.
Registrations
Time limited conditions expiration (Added 25 September 2020)
We are aware that many of you will have time limited conditions that were applied to your existing registration, to allow you to provide care services in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Many of these time limited conditions will be due to expire soon. We would like to remind you that if you wish to extend or amend the previous agreement (as detailed in the time limited condition), you are required to submit a variation for assessment.
This can be done through eForms.
If you no longer require the time limited condition, and wish for this to be removed from your registration certificate, please submit a variation for its removal.
Deferment of continuation of Registration Fees (added 8 April 2020)
The Care Inspectorate and Scottish Government recognise the financial and other pressures that providers of care services are currently under. To support service providers and assist with alleviating cash flow problems service providers are encountering at this difficult time the Care Inspectorate will delay the collection of continuation of registration fees due by care services until July 2020. We will review this position again in June 2020 before any fee collections are made.
This will mean care service providers need not pay any balance of the fees due for the 2019/20 financial year until July 2020.
Service providers normally due to receive fee invoices in April 2020 will not receive an invoice for the 2020/21 financial year until July 2020 (position subject to review in June 2020).
We are happy to make arrangements with service providers that would prefer not to defer the balance of 2019/20 fees. We are issuing more detailed guidance directly to care service providers.
Staffing in services during coronavirus outbreak (updated 20 March 2020)
Child to adult ratios feature in our registration and inspection of early learning and childcare (ELC). However, for other service types, including care homes, the Care Inspectorate stopped issuing staffing schedules at the point of registering a service in 2018. Instead, we expect the staffing numbers, and skills and experience of staff to reflect the needs of people who use services.
At this extremely challenging time, we will support all services in their need to apply flexibility and judgement around staffing to ensure the safety and wellbeing of people using the service. We recognise that services will need to be creative and make use of a wider range of resources. This could potentially include staff from other public services and volunteers. We recognise that this will mean services may not be able to undertake all normal recruitment checks as quickly and easily as they did before.
However, during this period it is important that providers put in place structures to support and oversee staff in their role, including any volunteers and unregistered staff. The Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) is responsible for registering the social care workforce. People can work in registrable roles for a period of 12 months without being registered, which enables services to adopt a flexible approach.
This highlights the six-month period after starting work to obtain registration. This applies to:
- new staff you might recruit
- workers covering other roles due to staff shortages
- students who seek work to help with shortages.
Review of social work governance and assurance in Scotland
On 15 July 2024 we notified all local authorities and health and social care partnerships across Scotland of our intention to undertake a national thematic review of social work governance and assurance arrangements.
The review is being carried out between July and December 2024 and a national report will be published in March 2025. The legislative basis for the review is S.53 of the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010.
Through the review we will answer these questions.
How well do social work governance and assurance arrangements support leaders to:
- Ensure statutory duties are carried out safely and effectively?
- Enable social work staff to be supported, accountable and effective in their practice?
- Assist social work staff to uphold core social work values?
We will span all areas of statutory social work including adults, children and justice social work services and will cover all local authority areas in Scotland.
The review will include: a review of documents, a national staff survey, interviews with key leaders from across Scotland and a range of focus groups with middle and senior managers.
Review timeline
More information about the review can be found in the following links:
Safe staffing improvement programme
The Health and Care (Staffing) (Scotland) Act 2019 (not yet enacted) was passed in 2019. The Care Inspectorate has been commissioned by the Scottish Government to lead on a national quality improvement programme to support care services in preparation for the enactment of the legislation.
Our vision
Working in collaboration with people who experience care, relatives, representation groups and other key stakeholders, our vision of the programme is to:
‘Ensure that in care services in Scotland there are the right people, in the right place, with the right skills at the right time working to ensure people experience the best health and care outcomes.’
We regularly publish programme updates and resources on The Hub.
To find out more information about the programme or you would like to get involved email us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Secure care pathway review 2022-23
Our approach
We carried out a secure care pathway review between July 2022 and July 2023 to consider the impact of the Secure Care Pathway and Standards that were published in October 2020. The review focused on young people up to the age of 18 who have been placed – or are at risk of being placed – by Scottish local authorities, in secure care accommodation.
The review centred on listening to and understanding the experiences of 30 young people across Scotland before, during and after experiencing secure care accommodation. During the review period we tracked the journeys of these young people and this helped us to consider impact and outcomes over time. The annual inspections of registered secure care providers continue to be carried out. We worked jointly with the inspectors of these services to inform the review, particularly in relation to the ‘during’ stage of young people’s journeys through secure care.
Our review is now complete and you can read the report here.
More information
Information about the secure care pathway and standards can be found here.
Self-evaluation of performance and quality assurance in justice social work
This justice social work self-evaluation will focus on the current capacity of services to evidence performance, quality and outcomes in relation to community based sentences. The self-evaluation activities will be undertaken in two phases between September 2024 and March 2025. A national report will be published in May 2025.
The approach to this work will be informed by Quality Indicator 6.4 (Performance Management and Quality Assurance) which is drawn from the Care Inspectorate’s Guide to Self-Evaluation for Community Justice in Scotland. The aim is to develop a clear understanding of strengths and develop an evidence-base that informs local and national improvement initiatives.
By using a self-evaluation approach rather than a traditional inspection model, we hope to minimise the burden on local authorities whilst building capacity for improvement across the sector.
Useful links:
Serious Incident Reviews
Serious Incident Reviews
The Care Inspectorate assumed responsibility for the oversight of learning from serious incident reviews when it was established in 2011. The function is underpinned by the Care Inspectorate’s statutory duties under the Public Service Reform (Scotland) Act 2010. The national guidance for serious incident reviews was developed in partnership with the Scottish Government and Social Work Scotland. The guidance outlines what is expected of local authorities when a serious incident comes to their attention.
The reporting of serious incidents currently pertains to people who have received a final disposal from court following conviction. This includes people made subject to the various requirements of a community payback order or a drug treatment and testing order. It also relates to everyone released from custody subject to statutory social work supervision. Guidance on the management and delivery of these orders and licences is contained within a variety of national outcomes and standards - Scottish Government collection of justice social work guidance.
When a serious incident occurs the local authority should notify the Care Inspectorate within five working days. The Care Inspectorate provides a quality assurance role in Serious Incident Reviews, by looking at how reviews have been conducted and whether these have been carried out in a robust and meaningful way. The Serious Incident Review guidance with appendixes to submit a notification and review can be found here.
If there are any queries in the meantime please contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Please submit the relevant forms/reports through secure email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The notification and review templates can be found here:
- Serious Incident Review: Notification
- Serious Incident Review Part One: Case Review
- Serious Incident Review Part Two: Reflective Learning Review
The main contact for this work is:
Mike Hendry, Strategic Inspector
Mobile 07388 709834