Care...about physical activity

Published: 15 September 2015

The Care Inspectorate’s Care about Physical Activity (CAPA) programme ran from April 2017 to May 2020.

CAPA used an improvement approach to help care providers build physical activity and more movement into the daily lives of those they support. Sometimes within hospitals and care settings and even in our own homes, older people can get out of the habit of moving. This has negative consequences. Prolonged sitting leads to poor health such as frailty, falls and bone health. It also results in a poorer quality of life, depression and loneliness.

Moving more often during the day is of crucial importance to older people’s health and wellbeing. Increasing strength and balance in particular also helps older people to remain independent for longer, have a better quality of life and contributes to reduced falls.

A report, including detail, stories and information from the programme, can be accessed here

Managers and staff who work with older people from:

*Care at Home        *Day Care                         *Care Homes

*Sheltered Housing  *Very sheltered housing     *Respite care

across 19 Health & Social Care Partnership areas were involved with the CAPA programme (see map below)

capa map

Care professionals of all levels, local inspectors, designated partnership leads, integration leads, community and leisure groups and others came together at a variety of learning events (see red tags on the map). Those present were supported to understand how movement contributes to positive health and wellbeing.

Participants were supported to translate this understanding into developing their own movement ideas in their own settings with the people they knew well. Principles of Community Connection, Organisational Culture and Physical Activity Participation were examined from the viewpoint of each service.

For example, how could residents in a care home connect with others in their community in an area of interest. 

Some services used an established battery of physical and psychological tests/ questionnaires to track improvement and to contribute this data to the overall evaluation of the programme.

The CAPA programme complemented the work of adult service inspectors who support services to provide high quality care and support that is right for each person as part of their scrutiny and improvement role.

Independent research commissioned by the Care Inspectorate investigated psychological and physiological impacts of moving more often. The first phase evaluation found that older people involved in the programme have significantly improved their hand grip strength, their low leg strength, gradually increased their flexibility which improved mobility and levels of independence and significantly reduced their likelihood of falls as a result of moving more. People also experienced greater life satisfaction and felt less anxious.

Case studies 

Click on the selection of short films below showing what happened when care professionals found ways to promote more movement for those they support. These films can be used in team meetings or viewed by staff who are interested in finding new ideas to improve health and wellbeing.

Margaret's story (Care at Home)

Jacqui, a home carer, talks about how promoting movement is not as time consuming as they originally thought and how they are helping people receiving care at home to incorporate moving more into their daily lives

Jean's story (Day Care)

See how day care centre staff supported Jean to get out of her wheelchair. Jean started to walk, became more active, enjoyed increased energy levels and took up hobbies and passions.

Beth's story (Care Home)

Show this short film to spark discussion at team meetings. Listen to how Beth's quality of life improved when care home staff started something small.

Daphne's story (Care Home)

Care Home staff help Daphne incorporate more movement into her day which improves her health and wellbeing. Daphne’s son talks about the differences he has seen.

Care...about physical activity resources

We developed many resources together with care professionals and people experiencing care. Here is a selection that you might find useful:

'Make Every Move Count' pocket guide which helps staff understand that movement is about the small, simple things we can add into daily life that make a big difference to people experiencing care.

'Moving More Often' pocket guide. People living in their own homes have found these useful to identify what is important to them, give support to move more often every day, promote independence and the possibility of continuing to live at home.

Information for relatives This short factsheet encourages relatives and friends to support their older relative to move more often for positive health and wellbeing. Some services have found it useful to include this information in care plans, introductory packs or newsletters

My moving more improvement record People experiencing care use this to track their improvement over time. People have found this personal record motivating to use themselves, and a useful way to involve family and friends.

'Care...about physical activity' booklet outlines the original CAPA resource developed for care homes

More information and good practice stories can be found by searching further in the HUB

  • Go to your area of interest (e.g. Adults & Older People), then e.g. Care Homes for adults.

Under Topics choose ‘Type - creative and physical activity ‘, or ‘Resources - case studies’ to pull up resources including films that you might find useful.

 

Downloads: 47662

Changes to notifications of deaths of looked after children and deaths of young people in continuing care or receiving aftercare provision

Published: 09 December 2021

Changes to notifications of deaths of looked after children and deaths of young people in continuing care or receiving aftercare provision

New arrangements for reviewing and learning from the deaths of children and young people came into force on 1 October 2021.   

The establishment of the National hub for reviewing and learning from the deaths of children and young people and recently published national guidance for child protection committees undertaking learning reviews will require changes to the ways in which local authorities review the deaths of looked after children and young people experiencing care.  

More information about these changes can be found here.

Downloads: 7505

Changes to registration, variations and cancelled services

Published: 06 October 2014

Apply to vary conditions of registration

If you need to vary, (add, amend or remove) the conditions of registration of your service, you should in the first instance discuss this with the inspector responsible for your service.  You will now be able to make an application to vary the conditions of your registration on the portal.  Note, you are currently only able to have one application for variation in progress at a time.

Unless otherwise agreed with us, the date the variation is to take effect from must not be less than three months after the date of application.  We can only grant or refuse an application to vary a condition – we cannot change the detail of the variation that you have originally requested.  However, whilst the application is still in progress you can update/amend the application yourself within the portal.  Where you subsequently decide that you no longer wish the variation request to be progressed, for instance, if it is no longer necessary due to a change of circumstances, then you should discuss this with whoever has been dealing with your application.  You must then withdraw the application via the portal, and we will receive automatic notification of this.

Guidance for childminders on applying to increase capacity in childminding settings

Notifiable events - when is formal regulatory action, including Variation, required - guidance for care service providers

Inactive services

We have implemented a revised policy on ‘Inactive Care Services’.

Services registered with the Care Inspectorate must operate within the legal framework laid out within the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010, (the “Act”).  We have adopted a policy where any service can make an application to stop operating for up to 12 months, without having to cancel their registration.  Where such an application is granted, a service will be referred to as ‘inactive’.

Reasons for a service to be treated as inactive would be limited to:

  • refurbishment of premises
  • provider has caring responsibilities for a limited period of time
  • provider maternity leave
  • provider health issues.

There may be, on occasion, other exceptional circumstances, which we may consider on an individual basis.

During a period of inactivity, a provider must continue to submit an annual return, pay continuation fees, submit notifications and ensure the service continues to meet all of the legal requirements under the Act.  Prior to the service becoming operational, the provider must notify us in advance that their service is operational and ensure the service is ‘fit’ to operate and meets the needs of the service users.

Applications for inactive care service status and notifications of intention to become operational should be submitted using the digital portal

The relevant forms are available via your portal account.  Select the “apply to become inactive / active” option on the right hand side of your menu page.  If you require any assistance please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.or contact 0345 600 9527 Monday to Friday 09:00 - 16:00.

Cancel a service

Any registered service can voluntarily apply to cancel their registration.

If you are a care service, and want to cancel your registration, you must complete our application to cancel a care service form before we can progress with your cancellation.  You can submit your request using through our digital portal

Cancelled services

We have an obligation to publish a list of all care services that have been previously registered and that are now cancelled.

You will be able to check here for a list of all cancelled services.  This is updated monthly to reflect any new cancellations.

Cancelled services 30 November 2024

If you require any further information about these services please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or contact 0345 600 9527.

 

Downloads: 109455

Children and young people

Published: 14 April 2022

Three teenagers sitting on a sofa.

Our role in children and young people’s services 

It is our job to make sure that every child and young person experiencing care in Scotland gets the best quality of care that meets their needs and choices and protects their rights. This is whether they live at home with their families, live in a children’s home, are fostered or adopted, stay in secure or school care accommodation or use respite services. We also inspect some services that provide care for families, such as women’s refuges, and housing support services that cater for young people.

Our strategic team assesses how well professionals from different disciplines and agencies work together. This is to make sure that children and young people who need care and protection are kept safe and their needs met. 

We assess how well services and partnerships self-evaluate and learn from adverse events to improve children’s experiences and outcomes.

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Following some feedback we had from young people, we have created posters that explain what inspections are. You can download our poster for residential child care or our poster for foster care and display this in your service to help young people understand what inspections are and how they can get involved.

The Promise in action animation 

Our new animation co-designed with our young inspection volunteers demonstrates The Promise in action – by making sure that our young people’s voices authentically influence our work. 

Text to complain

Complaints research from 2019 showed that less than one percent of the 1,400 children and young people in residential care settings raised concerns to us about their care.  

To handle complaints well, services need to have a healthy listening culture where people’s concerns are taken seriously and acted upon quickly.

Children and young people can text us directly on 07870 981 785 if they are not happy about their care. You can watch our short video about the text to complain service here, or download a poster to print here. You can also complain by filling in our complaints form online, calling us on 0345 600 9527 or emailing us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  

Our young inspection volunteers

Our young inspection volunteers Toni and Raysa. Toni has red hair and is wearing a yellow jumper and glasses. Raysa has blonde hair and is wearing a grey hat. They are both looking up to the camera smiling.

We work with 15 young inspection volunteers (aged between 18-26 years old) who visit children and young people’s services with us when we inspect.

Our young inspection volunteers talk with children and young people who use services and listen to their views. They meet managers to find out how well they involve children and young people to develop and improve services and they hear how well partnerships are fulfilling their responsibilities and duties as corporate parents.

If you would like to find out more about becoming a young inspection volunteer click here.

Click here to see some of the videos they have done for our joint inspections.

Our quality frameworks

Our quality frameworks support care services to self-evaluate. Our inspectors also use these when they inspect and look at the quality of care provided by services. 

Our children and young people’s inspection teams began using key question 7 in April 2022. As part of everyone's journey to meet the Promise, we reviewed key question 7 with inspectors, young people who experience or have experienced care and providers to evaluate the impact it was having and how well it was supporting the sector to self-evaluate its own performance. We made some changes as a result of this review and agreed that we will continue to use key question 7 for inspections from April 2024 onwards. We have also published new self-evaluation toolkits to support the sector. To support the launch we delivered webinars for care homes for children and young people and schoolcare accommodation and mainstream boarding schools and school hostels.

You can access the new KQ7 documents, full quality frameworks, and toolkits on The Hub here.

In April 2024 we held a live, online, briefing for providers, managers and external managers of registered services for children and young people. During the webinar we shared some overarching messages for the sector, on developments and practice themes identified throughout the previous inspection year; our methodology for the coming inspection year; and the increasing focus on young people’s voice and participation. You can watch the recording of the webinar here.

Care homes

Secure services

Two people making a love heart shape using their arms, looking away from the camera to the blue sky in the background.

School care accommodation services

The Registrar of Independent Schools, the Care Inspectorate and Education Scotland have worked together to produce Guidance on effective safeguarding for boards of governors in independent schools, to assist with self-evaluation and monitoring of child protection and safeguarding practices.

To set out our approach to regulating guardianship arrangements in boarding schools we have published Guidance for the regulation of guardianship arrangements in boarding schools.

Supporting unaccompanied asylum seeking children (UASC)

We understand that meeting the needs of asylum-seeking and refugee children and young people across Scotland is very challenging and we believe that we all need to work together, to make any improvements that are needed. To help inform this work we hosted a webinar, with input from COSLA, Scottish Guardianship Service, and the Scottish Refugee Council. The webinar covered:

  • the background to UASC policy and the National Transfer Scheme
  • information about what support and services are available
  • the context around why young people are arriving to Scotland, and what their lived experiences have been
  • an opportunity to explore any queries or concerns, and share examples of best practice.

The content is relevant for local authorities, social workers, residential childcare staff, fostering services, and foster carers. You can watch the recording of the webinar here.

To better support how we engage with children and young people who have English as a second or foreign language, we have developed this poster for services to display. It’s designed to let young people know that we are happy to book an interpreter to chat with them.

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  • We understand that the use of restrictive practices in the promotion of rights, independence and choice for children and young people conflicts with promoting and maintaining a duty of care by taking protective action to keep young people safe.
  • We are a member of Restraint Reduction Scotland, and have worked collaboratively with the Scottish Physical Restraint Action Group (SPRAG) to develop a Self-evaluation tool: The use of restrictive practices. It is designed to support services to evaluate how well they are doing in using restrictive practices and identify areas where they want to improve.
  • To support the launch of the self-evaluation tool, we held two webinars; a recording of the webinars combined can be found here.

Depriving and restricting liberty for children and young people

We recognise that services are treading a delicate balance between taking necessary action to keep children and young people safe, whilst not unnecessarily restricting liberty.  Our new position paper aims to set out our attitude, expectation, and actions around the restriction and deprivation of liberty in care home, school care and secure accommodation services.  This includes circumstances where children and young people may be deprived of their liberty, where their liberty is restricted, or where this is a risk through environmental design and/or care practices. You can see the paper here.

Children and young people placed cross border and at a distance from home

Distance placements refer to any child who has been placed in a care setting outside of their home community. You can read our report on ‘Distance placements: exploration of practice, outcomes, and children’s rights’ here.

In January 2022 we carried out a short thematic review of children and young people placed cross border on Deprivation of Liberty Orders. We spoke to nine of the children face to face, and had a telephone interview with one young person. You can read the report about this here.

Admissions

In aspiring to make residential care a positive choice for all children in Scotland who require it, and to promote best practice in admissions and matching, we published Matching Looked After Children and Young People: Admissions Guidance for Residential Services.

Care planning

To support staff in services to develop personal plans for children and young people we developed a Guide for providers on personal planning: children and young people. We spoke with young people to gather their views, and included quotes from young people throughout the document.

Records and notification reporting

By law all services must keep certain records, and tell us if particular events take place. You can read our Records that all registered children and young people’s care services must keep and guidance on notification reporting here.

Staffing

To support providers to ensure they are appropriately assessing and providing staffing levels to meet the needs of young people in their care, we published Guidance for providers on the assessment of staffing levels.

Corporate parenting

As a corporate parent, we carry out many of the roles any parent should.11.png

We work with other corporate parents to promote the wellbeing of all children and young people and keep them safe from harm. We work hard to enable children and young people to have as much of a say as possible.

Read our corporate parenting plan 2021-23.

We have developed Guidance for children and young people’s services on the inclusion of transgender including non-binary young people. This is in response to a number of services who approached us looking for advice on how best to support transgender including non-binary young people. The guidance is based on current good practice and includes real practice examples from the sector.

Stand Up For Siblings

We are a proud member of the Stand Up For Siblings partnership, a Scotland wide initiative to improve and change legislation, policy and practice.  It’s about making sure children and young people live with their brothers and sisters, where it is appropriate to do so, and sustain strong and positive lifelong relationships with them. Read the Staying together and connected: getting it right for sisters and brothers: national practice guidance.

Our young inspection volunteers made a big contribution to this award-winning work and made a film about promoting and supporting sibling relationships for children and young people who experience care. Watch the film here. 

The Promise

We continue to work to deliver our organisation's contribution to keeping The Promise for children and young people. The Promise is about providing more intensive, preventative support to families so they can stay together where it is safe to do so.

Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry

We work with the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry to investigate the abuse of children in care in Scotland.

Continuing care

We have been supporting the Staying Put agenda since 2013 and our role as corporate parents under the Children and Young people (Scotland) Act 2014 includes supporting young people moving from care to adulthood and independence.

Read our Guidance for services on the provision of continuing care, the Continuing Care and the Welfare Assessment: Practice Note and watch the Continuing Care and the Welfare Assessment Webinar Recording.

We were involved in Continuing Care and Your Rights, a project co-created with care experienced young people, CELCIS, and Clan Childlaw. Continuing Care and Your Rights provides accessible information for young people on their right to continuing care.

Continuing improvement

We have created a video to help you learn how to run your own improvement projects using the Model for Improvement and ‘Plan Do Study Act’ (PDSA) cycles. This will also be helpful to both services and providers when progressing areas for improvement made as a result of inspection.

The video includes specific examples relating to children and young people. 

The Health and Social Care Standards

Under the Health and Social Care Standards, everyone is entitled to high-quality care and support tailored towards their needs and choices. That is why the Standards focus on the experience of people using services and supporting their outcomes.14.jpg

The Standards apply to the NHS, as well as services registered with the Care Inspectorate and Healthcare Improvement Scotland. We use the Health and Social Care Standards to make sure services respect and meet people’s rights, needs and choices.

Download your copy of the Standards.

Equality and diversity

We believe that people in Scotland should experience a better quality of life as a result of accessible, excellent services that are designed and delivered to reflect their individual needs and promote their rights.

decorativeOur work focuses on people’s rights, choices and individual outcomes, the things that matter most to people. We continue to put equality and diversity at the heart of all we do. That’s why we made equality and diversity a key principle of our equality, diversity and inclusion strategy.

Downloads: 37038

Community justice in Scotland – approach to self-evaluation

Published: 04 July 2016

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.

Downloads: 40097

Continuing care for young people

Published: 17 October 2017

We have been supporting the Staying Put agenda since 2013 and our role as corporate parents under the Children and Young people (Scotland) Act 2014 includes supporting young people moving from care to adulthood and independence.

We have updated our rules for adult placement services, with changes to fees and combined service status. These changes support young people to remain in their family placement and support providers.

Where a fostering service and an adult placement service operate as one service solely in order to support young people who have been cared for in the family on a fostering basis and who now wish to remain with the same family on a continuing care basis, this will be treated as one service, for the purposes of fees. The level for application and continuation fee will be set at the fostering agency service level. (‘Solely in order to support young people who have been cared for in the family on a fostering basis’ means that the adult placement service does not provide throughcare or aftercare.)

This supports the legislation which states that the accommodation and service should be the same for the young person as they move from being a looked after child to continuing care. On this basis, we are able to treat the services as one. This will mean one fee and one inspection, with a single report published under both categories on our website.

The updated guidance for care services, which includes the policy statement and guidance for staff is available here.

Downloads: 13314

Counter Fraud, Bribery and Corruption

Published: 24 March 2022

Counter Fraud, Bribery and Corruption

The Care Inspectorate will:

  • take all reasonable steps to prevent fraud and corruption
  • ensure we have processes in place to detect fraud and corruption wherever possible
  • investigate fraud and corruption where it is detected or reported
  • pursue appropriate formal action against those involved in fraudulent or corrupt activities

We will take action where fraud, bribery or corruption has been found to have been committed in accordance with our Formal Action Policy.

What to do if you suspect fraud, bribery or corruption

If you are an employee of the Care Inspectorate please follow our internal procedures for reporting concerns.

If you are not an employee of the Care Inspectorate and you believe that there is fraudulent activity taking place, please report this using the details below or you may wish to report your concerns directly to the police.

You can contact the Care Inspectorate directly:

Jackie Mackenzie
Executive Director Corporate and Customer Services
(Fraud Champion)
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Kenny Dick
Head of Finance and Corporate Governance
(Fraud Liasion Officer)
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Or you can write to Jackie or Kenny at the address below:

Care Inspectorate
Compass House
11 Riverside drive
Dundee
DD1 4NY

You can if you prefer, report your concerns to Audit Scotland.

Further detail on the Care Inspectorate’s counter fraud, bribery and corruption approach can be found here.

Our position statement on Modern Slavery

What is Modern Slavery?

We recognise that workers recruited from overseas are a hugely valuable and important part of Scotland’s social care workforce.

Modern slavery is complex; but simply put, it describes a situation where someone is made to do something, and another person gains from this. Modern slavery is about being exploited and completely controlled by someone else, without being able to leave or belief that you cannot leave through threats by person in control. It includes
human trafficking, slavery, servitude and forced compulsory labour.

Modern slavery is the deception or coercion of a person for the purpose of exploitation.

Modern slavery can be present in any social care setting and victims could be either staff working in a service or people who are using a service.

Our strategic aim

We will constructively work with partners to end modern day slavery in Scotland’s social care system.

Our regulatory response

Our purpose is to ensure registered care services provide people with safe, highquality care and to encourage services to improve.

We will be alert to potential cases of modern slavery and to listen sensitively and compassionately when people raise issues with us. We will respond in the following ways:

  • If we receive or discover information that may indicate modern slavery, we will identify and record this threat. We will do this even if the person contacting us does not refer to it as modern slavery.
  • We will refer identified and potential victims through our established safeguarding referral routes.
  • We will monitor registration applications to check for warning si-gns of potential exploitation of skilled workers from overseas.
  • We will seek out early indication that sponsor licenses are being exploited by working closely with Home Office and other partners.
  • We will not hesitate to take action including proportionate regulatory and enforcement action where modern slavery and unethical recruitment practises pose a potential risk of harm.
  • We will work with other organisations to prevent, disrupt and reduce the likelihood of modern slavery in social care.
  • We will monitor the modern slavery situation by submitting reports and updates to SMG and ET quarterly or yearly.
  • To support our work, we will develop staff awareness/training and procedures.
Downloads: 6052

Covid -19 frequently asked questions

Published: 19 March 2020

As information, guidance and practice about Covid-19 is becoming established and less subject to rapid change, we are no longer maintaining the Covid-19 FAQs or the Covid-19 compendium. For key information, visit our Covid-19 information pages and the following links.

Guidance for Adult social care

Guidance for early learning, school aged childcare and childminder settings

Guidance for Children and Young People (CYP)

Other useful links for all social care settings

Downloads: 58628

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