Positive approach to risk in play

The Care Inspectorate is showing its support for nurseries, childminders and other early years care services that take a positive approach to risk, by setting out its position on regulating for risk in play. We launched our  position statement with the support of Play Scotland at their event Playing with risk: embracing the benefits with positive regulation, held in January 2016.

The Care Inspectorate’s position statement
“The Care Inspectorate supports care service providers taking a positive approach to risk in order to achieve the best outcomes for children. This means moving away from a traditional deficit model that takes a risk-averse approach, which can unnecessarily restrict children’s experiences attending registered services, to a more holistic risk-benefit model. For example, we encourage services to use risk assessment to support children to enjoy potentially hazardous activities such as woodwork using real tools, exploring nature and playing in the mud and rain. We do not expect written risk assessments to be carried out for daily play activities.”

Context
Embracing a risk-benefit approach is part of changing our regulatory culture. For example, when we inspect we now assess the experience of the children attending and try to help services to improve. Traditionally the regulator would have just measured inputs and ensured that all services complied with the expected standards.

A positive approach to risk in play is being taken by specialist outdoor-based services for children. Since the UK’s first full-time forest nursery was registered in Fife in 2008, outdoor-based services have flourished in Scotland. At this event, the Care Inspectorate celebrated the growth of these services and their contribution to developing a proportionate approach to risk. 

Play Scotland support
Cherie Morgan, Play Development Officer, Play Scotland says: “We want to see a common sense approach to risk in play, where practitioners weigh up the benefits, as well as the risks involved with activities. The opportunity to face challenges in a supportive environment helps children and young people learn to assess and manage risk for themselves, and this is vitally important for their development. We’re delighted to work with the Care Inspectorate to highlight this message to those who are responsible for the day to day care of children.”

Ministerial support
Aileen Campbell MSP and Minister for Children and Young People supports this new approach with the following statement.

“In June 2013 the Scottish Government published the Play Strategy for Scotland, which seeks to improve the play experiences of all children and young people, including those with disabilities or from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Strategy aims to ensure all children and young people can access play opportunities in a range of settings which offer variety, adventure and challenge. They must be able to play freely and safely while learning to manage risks and make choices about where, how and when they play according to their age, stage, ability and preference.

“A huge part of this is giving regulated services the confidence to provide good quality, challenging play opportunities for children in their care. Real life experiences for children cannot be free of risk; from the very beginning children learn from trial and error, falling and getting up, testing their own boundaries and this enables them to develop their own coping strategies and resilience.

“It is important too that children with additional support needs also have the chance to experience challenging play – and that quality play opportunities are offered to all children, according to their needs and preferences.

“Myth busting in terms of what ‘safe care’ is for our children is also important. Scotland’s children deserve to be cared for in a loving, nurturing environment that includes hugs and the comfort of touch, which is even more important now that children are in care environments from a younger age and for longer periods of time.

“I am delighted that the Care Inspectorate is supporting care service providers to adopt a more holistic risk-benefit model to help them achieve the best outcomes for children. This positive approach to risk emphasises confidence in providers using their professional judgement to support, nurture and challenge the children and young people in their care.”

Covid -19 frequently asked questions

As information, guidance and practice about Covid-19 is becoming established and less subject to rapid change, we are no longer maintaining the Covid-19 FAQs or the Covid-19 compendium. For key information, visit our Covid-19 information pages and the following links.

Guidance for Adult social care

• SG Adult Social Care Covid-19 guidance: This page holds for example guidance for adult care homes, visiting in care homes, care at home/sheltered housing, day care for adults, testing and vaccine.
  
• NHS Education Scotland: National Infection Prevention and Control Manual (NIPCM)
• Care Home IPC Manual (CHIPCM)
• CH Cleaning Specification guide
  
• NHS Inform, Coronavirus (Covid-19): Guidance for visiting loved ones in an adult care homeCoronavirus (Covid-19): Guidance for visiting loved ones in an adult care home
  

Guidance for early learning, school aged childcare and childminder settings

• SG Early learning, school aged childcare and childminder settings on reducing the risks of Covid-19
  
• Infection Prevention and Control in Childcare settings (2018)
  
• SG Routine Covid Precautions in Schools: guidance on reducing the risks in schools.
  
• ELC IPC elearning module

Guidance for Children and Young People (CYP)

• SG Coronavirus (Covid-19): residential and secure childcare
  

Other useful links for all social care settings

• Health and Social Care Standards: my support, my life
  
• All social care staff can register for an account with TURAS using this link. Once registered you will have access to a range of online education and training including, IPC modules relevant to social care or equivalent. IPC Foundations module can be found on learn zone.
• SSSC Infection Prevention and Control modules
  
• PHS Social Care Guidance
  
• National Infection Prevention and Control Manual (NIPCM): This is deemed good practice in all other social care settings that are not adult care homes.
  
• SG Test and protect: Information and support for people who are asked to self-isolate because of Covid-19.
  
• NHS Inform: Covid-19 guidance for general information about Covid-19 and associated Covid-19 outbreak protective measures.
  
• Winter (21/22) Respiratory Infections in Health and Care Settings Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) Addendum
  
• Disposal of LFD tests: SEPA position statement.
  
• HSE Disinfecting Premises
  
• National Antimicrobial Resistance and Healthcare Associated Infection (ARHAI) Scotland Compendium
  
• SG Coronavirus (Covid-19): advice for people on the Highest Risk List
  

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.

Guide to using the portal

Creating an account

To register for an online account and link your current service information to the portal please read:

• How to create an account on the digital portal

To create your online portal account visit: https://portal.careinspectorate.gov.scot/Account/Register

Managing access to your service or provider

You can also grant additional user access to the service information.  For example, a provider may want to allow a service manager access to a service, in order for them to view service information, submit applications and update service details.

Find out how to add a new user with service access. 

Find out how to add a user with provider access.

If you have access to a service on the eForms system, you can also use this to grant access on the digital portal. Please read our guidance on granting access to a service or provider.

Registering a new care service

You can apply to register a new care service using the digital portal. If you are an individual applicant, please see our guidance for contents of the application form for an individual applicant. If you are an organisation, please see our guidance for contents of the application form for an organisation.

We also have guidance to support you with accepting your conditions and becoming registered, and how to withdraw an application to register a care service.

If you need to add or amend a service managers details while you are in the process of registering a care service, please see our guidance for adding and amending managers details.

You can request advice from our registration team before you submit your application form using the portal. To do this, you must create an application to register a care service and fill in some details first.  If you need support with this please see our guide for requesting advice.

Viewing and changing  your service and provider details

For support with seeing your service details, please read our guides to viewing your service and provider details.

You can apply to change your service details such as change of manager or change the service address. These changes will require Care Inspectorate approval. 

You can also update (without the need for approval) your contact details –  email address and phone numbers and these will be updated on your record immediately.

Please see our guidance for changing service details and changing provider details for support with this.

Apply to become inactive 

You can apply online to become inactive.  Registered services must operate within the legal framework laid out within the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010, (the “Act”).  We have policy where any service can make an application to stop operating for up to 12 months, without having to cancel their registration.  Where such an application is granted, a service will be referred to as ‘inactive’. 

Reasons for a service to be treated as inactive would be limited to:  

• refurbishment of premises
• provider has caring responsibilities for a limited period of time
• provider maternity leave
• provider health issues.

There may be, on occasion, other exceptional circumstances, which we may consider on an individual basis. 

If you need help with this form, please read our guide to becoming inactive.

Apply to cancel a service 

Any registered service can voluntarily apply to cancel their registration, giving a minimum of three months’ notice.   

If you want to cancel your registration, you can now complete the application to cancel a care service form through your portal account.  This must be completed  before we can progress with your cancellation.   

If you need help with this form, please read our guide to cancelling a service

Apply to vary conditions of registration

If you need to vary, (add, amend or remove) the conditions of registration of your service, you should in the first instance discuss this with the inspector responsible for your service.  You will now be able to make an application to vary the conditions of your registration on the portal.  Note, you are currently only able to have one application for variation in progress at a time.

Unless otherwise agreed with us, the date the variation is to take effect from must not be less than three months after the date of application.  We can only grant or refuse an application to vary a condition – we cannot change the detail of the variation that you have originally requested.  However, whilst the application is still in progress you can update/amend the application yourself within the portal.  Where you subsequently decide that you no longer wish the variation request to be progressed, for instance, if it is no longer necessary due to a change of circumstances, then you should discuss this with whoever has been dealing with your application.  You must then withdraw the application via the portal, and we will receive automatic notification of this.

If you need help with this form, please read our If you need help with this form, please read our guide to a variation for a premises based service and guide a variation for a non-premises based service.