Our inspections will report on the experiences of children and young people subject to compulsory supervision orders living at home with their parents. When we use the term ‘children and young people’ in this page we are referring to this group.

Through a joint scrutiny approach, we will consider the experiences and views of children and young people. We will explore how well services are directed and delivered to ensure children are supported to live at home within their families to achieve positive outcomes.

The scope and timeline of the joint inspections

• Our legislative basis is the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010, section 115.
• We undertake joint inspections with scrutiny partners, including Healthcare Improvement Scotland, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland and young inspection volunteers. At times, we also involve associate assessors in our joint inspections.
• We will identify up to four local authority areas in 2025/2026 in which to conduct our joint inspections.
• The joint inspections will have a multi-agency scrutiny approach, liaising with community planning partners and corporate parenting partners responsible and accountable for this area of practice.
• We will take a scoping approach to our joint inspections, that is, learning iteratively as the inspection progresses to determine the best ways to seek the evidence required.
• We will conduct each joint inspection over a 12-week period, publishing one final report per local authority area.
• We will focus on a retrospective two-year period and scrutinise the impact of services for children and young people in that period of time.

The principles of the joint inspections

We will use a rights-based approach in the joint inspections, embedding the experiences of children and young people at the heart of planning, implementation and analysis of findings. Our joint inspections are underpinned by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. For example, we respect the right of children and young people to have their views heard by making participation of children, young people and families a core element of our approach. Our approach and design will reflect what children and families have told us matter the most to them, as encapsulated within the Promise.

We will consider the planning and progress that has been made by children’s services partnerships as they seek to keep The Promise. We will consider the five Promise Foundations and related priorities of family, care, voice, people and scaffolding which enable children to grow up loved, safe and respected.

Our approach and framework

Our approach will be proportionate to the evidence required, with a hybrid model of on-site and virtual activities. Our methods will include gathering information from local partnerships about the relevant services they provide and reviewing publicly available documents.

We will use the quality framework for children and young people in need of care and protection (November 2022). This framework is informed by the principles of the European Framework for Quality Management (EFQM) model which incorporates three tenets:

Our approach to reporting

We will publish one written report following each joint inspection. We are committed to improving accessible reporting specific to children and young people, this will involve further consultation with our young inspection volunteers.

In our report we will consider three key lines of enquiry. We will evaluate four quality indicators on our six-point scale. These are:

Resources

Our resources pages provide information for community planning partnerships (CPP) about the process for the joint inspection of services for children and young people. This includes services for children under the age of 18 years, or young people up to 26 years if they have been previously looked after.