Thank you to everyone who participated in our self-evaluation test inspections for adult services last year.
Our aim was to:
- gain understanding of where the sector was at
- explore how we could validate services self-evaluation of the core assurances
- assess whether the services own self-evaluation of the core assurances reflected that of the inspectors.
What did we do and who was involved?
Between October 2023 and June 2024, we worked with providers of adult care services to develop their skills around self-evaluation. This included holding three webinars, which were attended by more than 800 people, two face-to-face workshops with over 90 attendees, and a session with managers from a large provider. At these events, we provided practical support and advice to help services understand the process as well as providing information on how we would be testing and validating their self-evaluations.
We published regular updates and signposted to self-evaluation toolkits through various communication channels including provider updates, Care News and social media.
We delivered online sessions for adult inspectors to develop their understanding of the Care Inspectorate’s approach to self-evaluation and how we would test our approach to validating this during inspections.
A total of 309 inspections were undertaken across a range of service types including:
- care homes
- nurse agencies
- combined care at home and housing support services
- standalone care at home services
- standalone housing support services
- support services (not care at home)
Inspectors submitted data about their findings by completing a post inspection questionnaire. We also asked for feedback via MS forms from services involved in the tests.
In total, 49% were services with grades of ‘good’ and above and 51% were services with grades of adequate or below.
89 adult inspectors completed at least one inspection and gave feedback (95% of all adult inspectors).
What did we find?
- Over half of the services involved in the test had at least started the process of self-evaluation of the core assurances.
- Positive progress with self-evaluation was demonstrated across all service types.
- Services with grades of ‘good’ and above were only slightly ahead of grades of ‘adequate’ or below in terms of starting the self-evaluation process.
- Where services had fully or partially completed a self-evaluation, it mostly reflected the inspector evaluation when validated.
- It is more difficult and time consuming to validate self-evaluations that are not based on the core assurances or are recorded in different formats.
- Feedback from providers and the high level of engagement with the different learning events demonstrates that providers are generally positive about the approach to self-evaluation, feel well supported, and find the resources useful. Feedback from the learning events also shows that people left the sessions with increased confidence and motivation.
What next?
We made a number of recommendations going forward including:
- Develop a rolling programme of supports for self-evaluation. This will include workshops, webinars and learning resources (bitesize videos and extended toolkits) for a range of stakeholders. It would also support roll out to other sectors and create a tiered set of tools for services at different stages of the self-evaluation journey.
- Self-evaluation validation guidance for inspectors. We will develop further guidance document and information sessions for inspectors on our approach to validating self-evaluations. This will support consistency in our practice.
- Continue to encourage self-evaluation in the sector. This test has shown that providers are becoming more aware of our approach to self-evaluation. We could attend provider forums/events to promote and answer questions about self-evaluation and/or facilitate sessions.
- To continue and develop collaboration with the quality and health improvement teams and practice development groups to ensure a cohesive , organisational approach to self-evaluation and a suite of focussed tools supporting self-evaluation and improvement across a range of areas. This would follow on from work already started with tools such as restrictive practices, meaningful connection and digital
One of the first things we will be doing is to merge and update the current self-evaluation guidance documents. Currently there are two guidance documents, one more theoretical (2019 version) and one more practical. Merging these, with a focus on the practical application of self-evaluation, would reduce duplication and streamline the guidance. We will be sharing more information about this and how people can get involved in the next provider update.
As we move forward we will continue to keep providers involved and updated with information about how we plan to use and develop self-evaluation in our assurance and improvement activities.
