The way health and social care is being delivered is changing in Scotland, so inspections are changing too. From 2017, the Care Inspectorate and Healthcare Improvement Scotland have a joint responsibility in law to inspect the quality of strategic commissioning – that is the way in which local authorities and health boards come together in integration authorities to plan and deliver health and social care.
Since 2013, both scrutiny bodies have worked together to carry out joint inspections in sixteen different parts of Scotland. The reports are all published online for people to read. Now we are changing the approach to focus on how well these new integration authorities are working. We know it is early days for a lot of partnerships, so are focusing on three key areas: performance, how services are planned and commissioned, and leadership.
We’ve developed a new methodology which will help us answer three important questions:
- how well are integration authorities improving their performance in both health and social care?
- how well are the operational and strategic planning arrangements, and commissioning arrangements, working in a local area?
- how good are the vision, values and culture across the partnership, and the leadership of strategy and direction?
During 2017/18, we will be applying this approach in three local areas. We are committed to ensuring that we minimise, as far as possible, the demands on the partnership whilst supporting rigorous, fair and objective assessment of performance. Our inspection reports will be published for everyone to see. We will continue to use a scrutiny approach based around evidence-based self-evaluation, but are mindful that partnerships are still developing their joint approaches to self-evaluation. Because these inspections are more focused, we anticipate that the footprint will be smaller and shorter, with a faster period between an inspection and the publication of a report.
The Care Inspectorate will continue to inspect every social care service in Scotland, and will also be carrying out some focused work on adult support and protection, and self-directed support. If you are interested in finding out more, you can read a letter from the Chief Executives of the Care Inspectorate and Healthcare Improvement Scotland here. Further information, including the quality indicators to be used, will be published online soon.