The Promise stated that Scotland must strive to become a nation that does not restrain its children and robust self-evaluation of restrictive practices plays a key role in this journey. The Care Inspectorate, as a member of Restraint Reduction Scotland, has therefore worked collaboratively with the Scottish Physical Restraint Action Group (SPRAG) to review and update our restrictive practices self-evaluation tool.
The use of restrictive practices in the promotion of rights, independence, dignity and choice for children and young people conflicts with promoting and maintaining a duty of care and taking protective action to keep young people safe. Restrictive practices should also be the last resort.
What has changed
Although people told us the tool was working well and was quite easy to use, we received some feedback that helped us make some changes. Change in this version include:
- Amended layout to make individual sections and headings clearer. This will help support people who want to complete just one or two sections of the tool.
- Revised some of the wording to reduce duplication and make some sections more succinct.
- Added a section to each area to allow people to celebrate achievements, which was a key request from our consultation.
- Updated good practice links.
- Added further information on restrictive practice definitions and notifications to the Care Inspectorate.
While we have published the update tool to support the sector, there is no issue with continuing to use the previous version if you have been doing so. Services should feel confident to use any quality assurance and self-evaluation tools already in place to support improvement.
This video features a discussion with John McHale, Operations Manager at Kibble on their experience of using self-evaluation and their involvement in our review of the restrictive practices tool.