We are making changes to the way we inspect childcare agencies and we are engaging with services about our new draft quality framework for childcare agencies.
Our new childcare agencies framework sets out the elements that will help us answer the key questions about how agencies provide high quality care to children and their families and how they support their staff to achieve this.
The core of this methodology is for the framework to be used primarily a self-evaluation tool, but we will also use this on inspection.
We will be carrying out six test inspections between November and December to enable us to test the framework, key questions and quality indicators.
If your service is identified as a ‘test inspection’, your inspector will inform you on arrival at your service. Your views and input will be invaluable as to how our inspections are conducted in the future. Our inspector will engage with you throughout the test inspection. On completion of the test inspection, we will ask you for your feedback to help us finalise our methodology.
We are also keen to get feedback on the new childcare agencies framework from our partners, staff working in these services, and people who experience care. We would appreciate if you could read our draft framework and complete our survey to let us know what you think.
Read the draft framework here.
Click here to complete the survey.
The survey is open until Friday 15 December.
Information collected from the test inspections and the survey will inform the final quality framework, which we aim to publish early next year.