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
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.
Testing
Clarification on asymptomatic testing for social care staff (Added 1 April)
As soon as possible
The Scottish Government has advised that daily asymptomatic (work day) LFD testing will no longer be required and social care settings should revert back to their routine, baseline asymptomatic testing as soon as this is possible. This is either a weekly PCR or twice-weekly LFD (apart from adult care home staff who will continue to test with a weekly PCR and twice-weekly LFD).
This approach to testing in social care has been informed by clinical advice and is subject to ongoing review. LFD tests are extremely effective at picking up the virus in asymptomatic individuals, specifically when they are most infectious and therefore more likely to pass it on to others. This is considered proportionate while still offering sufficient protection to those at highest risk.
From Monday 18 April
The role of Covid-19 testing is changing from population wide testing, to targeted testing to support clinical care. The Scottish Government approach to testing in social care has been informed by clinical advice and is subject to ongoing review.
Based on this advice, regular asymptomatic testing will continue for parts of the health and care workforce. This is primarily in settings which are still considered high risk and/or where those using services are deemed to be at a higher risk of hospitalisation from Covid-19.
Testing will stop for staff groups in settings that are now deemed to be lower risk and/or in services which do not involve close personal care and contact or where clients are no longer at a higher risk of Covid-19.
For pathways/services continuing to test, we are moving away from using PCR testing (with the exception of adult care home staff) and asking staff to test twice weekly with LFD tests.
As stated, LFD tests are extremely effective at picking up the virus in asymptomatic individuals and specifically when they are most infectious and therefore more likely to pass it on to others.
Providers with excess LFD stock can pause their deliveries by calling the NSS helpline on 0800 008 6587.
For an overview of the social care asymptomatic pathways and changes in these pathways from Monday 18 April, click here.
Introduction of Test and Protect transition plan (Added 16 March 2022)
The Scottish Government published its Test and Protect Transition Plan. The Transition Plan set out the timelines for moving away from population-wide testing aimed at reducing transmission, towards a more targeted approach to testing. A notice explaining this can be found here.
Introduction of Orient Gene 7s LFD kits (Added 12 August 2021)
The Scottish Government has advised us that Orient Gene 7s LFD testing kits are being introduced. These new kits will begin to be distributed week beginning Monday 16 August when guidance and training materials will also be published here. All existing Innova 25s stock must be used up first. Please note you should enter the LOT number from the box when recording results on http://www.covidtestingportal.scot/. If you currently receive PCR kits, you will continue to do so and guidance remains unchanged.
Scottish Government update on testing (Added 16 July 2021)
The Scottish Government has updated its guidance on testing in care homes and adult social care as follows.
Care home staff
Care home staff – discretion to allow staff one LFD test per week at home using LFD test kits approved for self-test at home once available (most likely during August)
Coronavirus (Covid-19): adult care home lateral flow device testing
Care home visitors (friends/family)
Family/friend care home visitors - discretion to allow LFD testing at home where tests are collected through the community testing route.
Coronavirus (Covid-19): adult care home lateral flow device testing
Social care staff (excluding care homes but working in the services listed below)
Discretion to allow staff two LFD tests per week at home using LFD test kits approved for self-test at home once available (most likely during August). This is not applicable to staff who undertake PCR tests.
Coronavirus (Covid-19): social care and community based testing guidance
Social care staff
- short break/respite services
- Independent Living Fund Scotland assessors
- social workers
- learning disability settings
- women’s shelters
- personal assistants
- care inspectors
- care at home
- sheltered housing and housing with multiple occupancies
- adult day centres/adult day care services
LFD staff testing notifications guidance (Added 15 April 2021)
Following the introduction of regular LFD (Lateral Flow Device) testing for staff in a range of settings and services, we wanted to provide some clarification on which notifications to use following the outcome of tests:
LFD positive test for one or more staff – Please complete Covid-19: outbreak – notification of suspected case. Only one ‘notification of suspected case’ is needed even if several people have a positive LFD test. Staff who have a positive LFD test must then arrange to have a confirmatory PCR test.
If the outcome of the subsequent PCR test(s) is positive – Please complete Covid-19: outbreak – notification of confirmed case for each individual who has a positive PCR test.
If the outcome of the PCR test(s) is negative – Please complete Covid-19: outbreak – end of suspected case(s).
Weekly testing for agency staff deployed to care homes for adults and older people (Added 24 July 2020)
The Scottish Government has issued guidance to ensure that all staff deployed to care homes for adults and older people from staffing agencies are tested for Covid-19 prior to deployment. They request that agencies provide assurance that a process is in place for testing staff prior to deployment to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by Friday 31 July. You can access the guidance here.
Testing staff in care homes (Added 24 July 2020)
The Scottish Government testing directorate asks care homes to complete a weekly ‘safety huddle’ template on staff testing. There have been some inconsistencies in recording of the number of staff eligible for testing and the number of staff who have declined tests. For clarity:
Recording of number of staff eligible for testing – Only staff who are at work in the care home should be included and those staff who are not at work for any reason should be excluded from this number e.g. annual leave, sick leave, days off, self-isolating or working elsewhere. Staff who have previously tested positive and have returned for work are also excluded from this number as they are currently not included in the staff testing programme
Recording of number of staff who decline testing – Only staff who are eligible for testing as defined above that have declined testing should be included. Staff who are at not work or staff who have previously tested positive should not be included in this number.
You can find further guidance and the weekly template here.
Guidance from Health Protection Scotland on Covid-19 in care homes (Added 14 July 2020)
Health Protection Scotland has published guidance for PCR testing in care homes and the management of Covid-19 PCR test positive residents and staff.
Letter to all care homes on testing from Scottish Government (Added 23 April 2020)
Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport Jeane Freeman has issued a letter for care all care homes to provide further details on procedures in place for testing care home staff and residents for Covid-19. You can read the letter here.
Interim guidance on Covid-19 PCR testing in care homes (Updated 16 May 2020)
Health Protection Scotland has released Interim guidance on Covid-19 PCR testing in care homes and the management of Covid-19 PCR test positive residents and staff.
You can view the guidance here.
Covid Winter Support Webinars
The Care Inspectorate are inviting you to participate in a series of Covid Winter Support Webinars.
This three level approach will support both care homes for older people and care at home services to prepare for the challenges of winter in a Covid-19 context.
Individual service specific webinars will be delivered initially by region and will begin in mid-November 2020.
All care home and care at home services will receive an invite to the webinars in due course.
Level 1 content: 1-hour webinars
- Sign posting to Covid-19 and infection control specific resources taken from national guidance and simplified by the Care Inspectorate into a one stop shop for adult social care.
- Share the learning from frequently asked questions (FAQs) from services.
Level 2 content: 1.5-hour webinars
- Review key question 7 from the quality framework for care homes – How good is our care and support during the Covid-19 pandemic?
- Introduce key question 7 from the quality framework for care at home – How good is our care and support during the Covid-19 pandemic?
- Share the new Care Inspectorate Covid-19 self-evaluation and improvement planning tool for care homes for older people and care at home
Level 3 content:
- Looking at specific topics, resources and guidance based on the themes identified by the sector and Care Inspectorate intelligence, as highlighted in the recent letter to services from our Chief Executive Peter Macleod.
Disabled children and young people: Thematic review 2023-24
On this page you will find information about our national report Disabled children and young people’s experiences of social work services: a thematic review.
Formats
- Braille is available on request
If you require any other formats please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Review
Our aim in carrying out this review was to learn and understand more about disabled children and young people’s views and experiences of the support they received from social work services. We focused on social work’s contribution to getting it right for every disabled child and considered how well disabled children’s rights were being respected and upheld.
This report presents the key messages of our review of how well social work services contribute to ensuring disabled children have their rights respected and receive early care and support. It includes reflections and actions for social work services and Scottish Government to consider in order to improve outcomes for disabled children and young people.
Key messages
Our review found that:
- Respectful relationships were key to building a culture of listening to and respecting children and young people’s views. This ensured they were engaged in decisions about their care and support.
- Too many disabled children and young people’s views, feelings and wishes were not being heard.
- When children and young people received the right support at the right time from social work services, this helped them to grow and develop
- Increasing complexity of need and high demand for services was outweighing the availability of supports.
- Children and young people were not always provided with meaningful choices about the support they received.
- Parents and carers routinely provide a significant level of care and support. Their wellbeing must be promoted and protected.
- The quality of social work assessments, plans and reviews were variable and were not always properly addressing all the child or young person’s needs.
- The experience of transitioning into life as a young adult continues to be characterised by unpredictability and uncertainty for too many disabled young people.
- Compassionate and dedicated social work staff were helping to improve the lives of children and young people. High workloads and recruitment and retention of staff significantly challenged staff teams.
- The social work role was not always easily understood by families and/or other professionals.
- Reliable data and a shared definition of disability are not available to inform future planning or to support the setting budgets.
Actions required
The responsibility for improvement sits with us all. The actions noted below will require a shared approach across Scottish Government, local authorities, national and local organisations and public bodies, including the Care inspectorate.
The actions required:
- The views of disabled children and their families must be considered as part of service mapping, understanding unmet need and service planning.
- A robust approach to gathering and analysing data on disabled children and young people must be implemented, both in social work services and wider. This must be used effectively to inform service planning and improvement.
- We must take action in response to the views of disabled children and their families to ensure gaps in service provision are addressed.
- The role of social work services in providing care and support to disabled children must be clearly defined and understood across agencies. Clear and accessible information should be available and communicated to children and their families. This should include eligibility criteria.
- Opportunities for effective early intervention should be strengthened.
- Opportunities for play and friendships, along with other areas that are important to children, should be maximised. This will need a collective and holistic response.
- Adequate resourcing must be made available to enable services to develop and improve.
You can read the full report here.
Our support to local partnerships
Our support to local partnerships
Each strategic inspector acts as link inspector to one or more local authority areas across the country. The key purpose of the link inspector role is to fulfil the Care Inspectorate’s ‘general duty of furthering improvement in the quality of social services’ in relation to local authority social work services. This duty is set out at section 44(1)(b) of the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010.
The link inspector role has a degree of complexity because few social work services are now provided on a standalone basis. Most are now planned, delivered and monitored through partnership arrangements. Regardless of their specialist area, link inspectors engage across the broad spectrum of social work and care services for adults and older people, children and young people and justice services in their link areas.
The key areas of activity for link inspector work are:
- monitoring the performance and quality of social work services
- monitoring the performance of partnership public protection arrangements
- identifying factors which are supporting social work services to deliver good or improved outcomes, and any barriers
- highlighting risks to the delivery of positive outcomes by social work services, and the potential impact of those risks
- identifying good practice within social work service and disseminating this more widely
- supporting the efforts of local authorities and partnerships to build capacity for continuous improvement.
The Care Inspectorate also provides relationship managers for each council area, with responsibility for assurance and improvement work in relation to regulated services. There is a relationship manager for adult services and one for ELC. The link inspector and relationship managers work closely together.
More information about the relationship manager role can be found 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.
Information on the link inspector role for local authorities and partnerships can be found here.
Our inspections
The strategic inspection team carries out a range of inspections and inspection activities across adult, children’s and justice services. The legal framework for our inspection activity is set out in the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010, with our duties and powers to carry out joint inspections with other scrutiny bodies explained at section 115 in part 8 of the Act . We focus on the planning and delivery of social work and social care services by local authorities and partnerships and on the outcomes that services achieve for children and adults.
Click on the links below to read more:
- Inspections overview
- Joint inspections of services for children and young people
- Joint inspections of services for adults
- Joint inspections of adult support and protection
- Justice
- Secure care pathway review 2022-23
- Disabled children and young people thematic review 2023-24
- Care experienced young people thematic review
- Review of social work governance and assurance in Scotland
- Self-evaluation of performance and quality assurance in justice social work
Notification on controlled drugs
Notification on controlled drugs
Providers should notify the Care Inspectorate to any adverse events and concerns involving schedule 2, 3, 4, and 5 controlled drugs used in care settings, when they occur, and while the service user is receiving care in the care service.
Please note, it is a legal requirement for care services to notify the Care Inspectorate of the matters listed in this document. Where the requirement is limited to a specific type of care service, this is detailed in the guidance.
Care services and local authorities must use our eForms system to make these notifications.