Health and Social Care Standards
On 1 April 2018, Scotland's Health and Social Care Standards came into effect, replacing the National Care Standards. The Care Inspectorate is required, by law, to consider the Health and Social Care Standards when making decisions during our inspections and other scrutiny and improvement work.
We encourage services to refer to these when planning and delivering care.
Over time, the Care Inspectorate is testing and evaluating different ways to carry out its inspections of care services against the new Standards, starting with care homes for older people in summer 2018.
As part of implementing the new Health and Social Care Standards, the Care Inspectorate reviewed the adult to child ratios in early learning and childcare (ELC) settings and issued guidance. This reflects the ratios that existed under the previous National Care Standards, with some additional advice included within the guidance. The guidance will be reviewed in May 2019.
Care Inspectorate report on Health and Social Care Standards implementation
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Registration requirements for residential services and care workers for children and young people as they move into adulthood
Joint statement by the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) and the Care Inspectorate.
We’ve had some questions about the registration requirements for workers and services providing continuing care for young people over the age of 16 and under 26 years following the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act, Part 11 Continuing Care. We have considered the issue and decided not to change anything.
The Continuing Care legislation supports continuing care for young people beyond the age of 16 and into young adulthood and this may mean for some residential childcare services they are not only caring for children and young people but also for young adults.
The introduction of Continuing Care has raised questions about how staff and services should be registered with the SSSC and the Care Inspectorate, given that young people will move from childhood to adulthood, while being supported by the same workers and services.
The agreed approach is that there will be no registration changes to either the services registered by the Care Inspectorate or the individual workers registered with SSSC in respect of residential services. So, care homes for children and young people and school care accommodation services will continue to be registered with the Care Inspectorate as residential childcare services. Those working in these settings will also continue to be registered on the parts of the SSSC Register for childcare and residential school care so there will not be any changes to their registration.
Both the SSSC and the Care Inspectorate will expect services and staff providing care and support to young people under Continuing Care to have the skills and knowledge and the services to develop policies to reflect the specific needs of the group for which they are providing care and support.
This approach ensures that the appropriate degree of robust regulation is maintained without placing any extra requirement on workers or services, and supports the development of innovative services for young people to get the best support into their adult life. Legislative arrangements for the registration of foster care agencies and adult placement agencies are separate to this and the Care Inspectorate will issue guidance shortly on this point.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently asked questions from the briefing sessions to community justice strategic groups to the Care Inspectorate.
| Questions/Points raised | Response |
| Will the model use a 6 or 4-point evaluation scale? | From on-going discussion, we recognised that a 4-point scale might simplify the model and allow for different language but overall, it was felt a 6-point scale would be more helpful in being able to evaluate and see improvement over time. Using improvement language was viewed as being beneficial. |
| As different partnerships are at different stages in development, there was some reservation about capacity to undertake this work and what the expectations were to undertake self-evaluation. | A second phase of the project has been proposed which would focus on building capacity and confidence in partnerships in undertaking meaningful self-evaluation. Partners thought this was required and as well as support locally, there may be benefits for specific support for some partners on a national basis. The OPI Framework does not specify requirements specifically about undertaking self-evaluation. However, embarking on this work will be externally valuable for partnerships in helping strive for continuous improvement and excellence and establishing a strong sense of performance and key priority areas for action. It will also enable partners to identify key strengths. When Community Justice Scotland comes into being, they may wish to offer further views on this. |
| We sent the initial correspondence for the briefing to chairs of Community Planning Partnerships; this has not always resulted in it being passed on. | We took this approach at the end of March 2016 as we recognised strategic partnerships were at different stages in development and CPP chairs were the one constant. We then followed this up by ensuring we copied all transitions leads in to subsequent correspondence about the briefings and this proved more successful. Subsequent dialogue with local areas has resulted in the decision that we will make all chairs of strategic groups the main contact point with the transition leads copied in to all communication. This should make communication flow easier and more consistent. |
| Partners felt strongly that the language should have an improvement tone. | We agree and will endeavour to ensure the model reflects this. |
| Partners had some reservations about expectations of performance against the quality indicators within the self-evaluation model. This was based on the transition stage and the timing required to embed community justice and how this may reflect performance evaluations. |
We understand there are reservations and there are a couple of elements to consider.
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| Are you speaking to other groups as well as statutory partners? | Yes, we have an extensive approach to engagement and involvement, which will be happening during summer 2016. This will involve a staff survey, service user focus groups and stakeholder focus groups/meetings. |
| Some partners were slightly apprehensive that the staff survey would ask questions about community justice that may still be new or unknown to many staff and were unsure how this would be interpreted and used. | The staff survey is for us to develop the self-evaluation model only. This will be to ensure that a wide range of staff have an opportunity to give their views and influence what the self-evaluation model looks like. The survey is confidential and we will not use it for any other purpose |
| Will partners be able to use the survey questions for their own use? | There is no reason why partners can’t use the content of the Care Inspectorate survey with their staff locally to help gather views and opinions about community justice. They may want to consider amending some or all of the questions to meet local needs |
| Has there been any research done in developing the model? | The proposed model is based on the EFQM framework which is widely known and used and highly regarded across a very wide range of public and private sector organisations. Frameworks based on EFQM have been used to inform scrutiny models in Scotland for many years. In developing this model we are also drawing on existing research, policy and strategy including ‘Reducing reoffending in Scotland’ and ‘Commission on Women Offenders’. |
| Whilst a self-evaluation model is helpful the demand on time was highlighted in respect of evidence. Is there any way to reduce this? | We will consider this when developing the model and plan to include some tips about approaches to gathering evidence. In all of the models we have developed, we encourage partners to use evidence they need to gather anyway, either for the purposes of routine reporting or for ongoing service improvement, rather than undertaking self-evaluation for its own sake. |
| Some partners were slightly concerned about the plans for future inspection of community justice and them being over scrutinised. | The OPI Framework states the intentions for any future inspection of community justice. The Care Inspectorate recognises the need for any scrutiny work to be proportionate, risk-based, targeted and firmly directed at supporting improvement in outcomes for people. |
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Why your annual returns are so important
Why your annual returns are so important
Every year in January and February, we ask care service providers to complete an annual return. It asks for a great deal of information about your service and the people who use it. It is important to know why you are asked for this information, and what we do with it.
First and foremost, the information you provide in the annual return helps us understand your service. This means inspectors are able to plan and prepare for effective inspections that are focused appropriately.
Not only is the annual return important for planning and focusing inspections, but the information you also give provides a national picture, which can help the us and other partner organisations in a number of ways.
This year's annual returns are now closed. We would like to thank everyone who submitted their annual return to us by the deadline, Sunday 17 March 2024. The information you have provided will help us plan, inform and carry out our inspections and improvement work.
Even inactive services must submit an annual return.
If a service was registered on or after 1 October 2023, it should try to complete an annual return this year. Although it is not mandatory for these services, any information supplied will be used by the Care Inspectorate and Scottish Government. The information entered this year will automatically appear in the December 2024 annual return and only information that has changed will need to be entered.
Benchmarks and comparisons for inspectors
Inspectors can compare a service they are looking at with national averages to identify potential issues. For example, if the inspector is preparing to inspect a service with higher staff turnover than average, when they inspect, the inspector might look at the impact this could have had on the quality of care and outcomes for people using that service.
Publishing statistics
We also publish statistical reports of some of the annual returns data. We also use the annual return data to inform many of our other publications such as:
- Early learning and childcare statistics 2022
- Staff vacancies in care services 2022
- Fostering and adoption statistical bulletin 2022-23
National policy makers (the Scottish Government) can use these summaries and publications to shape and evaluate national policies and providers can see how their service compares with other services.
Supporting improvement
The intelligence we gather through annual returns helps us target our improvement activity and support within social care. It is a great source of baseline data across a variety of health and wellbeing indicators which we use to identify, drive and track improvement, for example infection control, nutrition and the recruitment and retention of staff. The data also helps us to identify trends and topics by both geographical area or service type, so that we can see where best to focus our improvement support work, for example, improvement workshops or new resources and guidance for care services across the sector.
Reducing duplication and sharing information
We also share information with other public bodies to reduce duplication and the costs of data collection for both the taxpayer and the people providing data. For example, anonymised staffing information is shared with the Scottish Social Services Council, so they can develop intelligence about the workforce without having to collect additional data from care services.
If you need help accessing the annual return, you can call our contact centre on 0345 600 9527 or read our frequently asked questions.
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Community justice in Scotland – approach to self-evaluation
On the 24 November 2016 the Scottish Government launched the national strategy for community justice alongside the Outcome, Performance and Improvement Framework (OPI Framework). These outline the vision for community justice in Scotland with the OPI Framework providing expectations and guidance for statutory partners and the third sector. The statutory partners are:
- Local authorities
- Health boards
- Police Scotland
- Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS)
- Skills Development Scotland
- Integration joint boards (IJBs)
- Scottish courts and tribunals service
- Scottish Ministers (in practice, the Scottish Prison Service and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal service)
The model for community justice came in to full effect on 1 April 2017. At the same time the new national body for community justice, Community Justice Scotland, also commenced.
The Scottish Government commissioned the Care Inspectorate to develop a guide to self-evaluation for community justice in Scotland. This guide sits within the OPI Framework and is part of the wider approach that statutory partners, third sector and others can use in striving for continuous improvement and excellence in community justice.
The self-evaluation guide was also launched as part of the OPI Framework can be downloaded by clicking on the links below
A guide to self-evaluation for community justice in Scotland
Useful information and quick tips for using the self evaluation guide
The development of the guide was undertaken in a truly collaborative way that ensured key partners, services users and other stakeholders were involved throughout the development process. We met with strategic groups to discuss self-evaluation and harness their views on different approaches to the guide. We sent a survey to staff involved in delivering community justice across Scotland to hear what they thought was important. We also met with groups of people with lived experience of community justice to gather their views and ensure the guide reflected what was important to them.
While the guide is primarily for statutory partners and the third sector to use as an approach for continuous improvement and striving for excellence, it also forms the basis of the model for scrutiny and inspection of community justice in the future.
Update briefing note July 2018
Completed supported and validated self evaluations
If you have any questions about this please contact Jane Kelly on 07468702550 or by email on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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