Inspections overview

• Inspection types
  
• Inspection teams 
• Inspection methodology
• Inspection activities
• Inspection reports  
• Quality assurance
• Inspection governance  
• Covid-19

Inspection types

Our specific inspection focus and programme at any one time is agreed with the Scottish Government and published in the Care Inspectorate’s Scrutiny, Assurance and Improvement Plan. We take a number of different approaches to inspection, designed to meet different scrutiny objectives. These include, but are not limited to:

Inspections and joint Inspections: inspections of individual local authorities or partnerships in relation to key priority areas. Local authorities are identified for inspection based on a combination of risk assessment and rotation of scrutiny activity.

Progress reviews: return visits to a local authority or partnership to check progress following a previous inspection and set of recommendations. Progress reviews are usually (but not always) carried out where the original inspection identified significant areas for improvement.

Thematic reviews/inspections: inspections carried out in a limited number of local authority or partnership areas to explore a particular area of policy or practice that is of national interest. These reviews may or may not evaluate the performance of individual authorities or partnerships but are primarily designed to explore the national picture relating to a given theme and make national recommendations.

Supported self-evaluations: we are always keen to support and encourage self-evaluation. We may at times work proactively with identified local authorities and partnerships to support and validate their self-evaluation of particular areas of activity.

Inquiries: this approach uses an abbreviated approach to explore a particular theme or issue across the country. It is usually designed as a discrete piece of work, carried out over a relatively short time to produce a quick report that provides insight into the key issues relating to the theme.

Inspection teams

Our inspection teams have an inspection lead with responsibility for effectively delivering and concluding the individual inspection. The lead is supported by a deputy lead and a team of inspectors drawn from the Care Inspectorate and relevant partner scrutiny bodies. Our inspections may be supported by associate assessors and people with lived experience (inspection volunteers). The administration and organisation of inspection activities is managed by a team of strategic support officers.

The size of an inspection team will be determined by the scope, methodology and planned length of the inspection. Sometimes, additional resources may be allocated for specific parts of the inspection. However, most inspections will have a core team of between six and 10 members.

How resources are deployed across the different activities of the inspection, and the timing of activities, is captured on a plan that we call the inspection footprint.

Inspection methodology

For each set of inspections, we develop a quality framework (QIF). The quality framework outlines what we expect the quality of the service provided to be. The frameworks we use in our strategic inspection work are based on the EFQM (European Foundation for Quality Management) excellence model, widely used by organisations for managing change and improving performance. The Health and Social Care Standards are woven throughout the quality indicators.

Overall, the QIF provides a model to support inspection. We examine:

• performance and the outcomes that services achieve for the children and adults who use them
• the processes that support service delivery
• the vision, leadership, management and planning of services.

The quality frameworks are also available to local authorities & partnerships for them to use for self-evaluation purposes.

 Inspection activities

The activities carried out by inspection teams to gather information can differ across inspections. However, there are some activities which have been proven to consistently provide good information and are therefore used regularly as part of inspections. These include:

Information and communication

The local authority or partnership can expect to receive full information about the inspection.

Most inspections provide a written guidance document of some sort, explaining the various stages and activities of the inspection, along with timescales.

In most inspections, we ask the local authority or partnership to nominate a local co-ordinator to manage and co-ordinate the various activities for them.

Throughout the course of the inspection, there are pre-planned meetings between key members of the inspection team and the local authority or partnership. These may be called professional or partnership discussions. Their key functions are: for the inspection team to feedback on findings so far; for the local authority or partnership to reflect on those findings; for the parties to discuss arrangements and plans for the next phase of the inspection.

Self-evaluation

It is a priority for the Care Inspectorate to support local authorities and partnerships to evaluate their own progress. Most of our inspections ask the local authority or partnership to provide a position statement and supporting evidence at the beginning of the inspection to help inform the inspection team’s understanding and formulate lines of enquiry.

Talking to children and adults who use services

Understanding the experience of people who use social work and social care services is fundamental to inspection, and we use a range of methods to gather the views of both people and unpaid carers. These are likely to include surveys, interviews, events, focus groups, and a range of activities developed to support specific inspections.

Reviewing records

Reading the records of children and adults who use services (also known as file reading) is a rich source of evidence for the inspection teams and is a part of many inspections. It provides understanding of how processes work and gives a picture of how staff interact with people using services.

Support networks

As well as reading records, many inspections include further examination of the care and support journeys experienced by children and adults by meeting with the staff and other significant people who have been part of that journey. This means that inspectors are able to further explore questions that have arisen from reading case records.

Staff surveys

Many inspections include surveys issued to staff. The inspection team often requests the help of the local authority or partnership in distributing the survey and encouraging staff to respond. The arrangements for issuing the survey, and which staff should receive it, will be discussed with the inspection co-ordinator by the inspection lead and strategic support officer.

Interviews and focus groups with key stakeholders

Most inspections involve focus groups or interviews with key stakeholders, including staff, managers, senior leaders, representatives of other statutory and third sector organisations. Often this takes place towards the end of an inspection as it gives the inspection team a good opportunity to discuss themes and issues that have emerged during other inspection activities.

Inspection reports

Inspection teams use regular team meetings to identify and explore themes that emerge from inspection activities. We make sure that potential findings are triangulated and corroborated through a range of activities before accepting them.

Inspection reports for each strand of inspection activity are tailored to the requirements of that inspection, so there are differences between the reports produced by each strategic inspection team. There will also be differences in the reports produced by each team when they are working on different inspection themes.

However, in general, strategic inspection reports can be expected to contain:

• a summary of key findings and/or strengths and areas for improvement
• an analysis of the inspection findings based on the relevant quality framework
• some form of evaluation of the local authority or partnership’s performance – which may or may not have grades attached
• recommendations for action and/or improvement.

Quality assurance

We aim to achieve a high quality for all our work and want it to have maximum value for all our stakeholders and help to improve the experience of people who use services. To help us achieve this, each inspection programme has a range of quality assurance arrangements:

Each programme has arrangements for review of the inspection approach and methodology which take account of the learning from each inspection while balancing the need for consistency. A key source of learning is from post inspection questionnaires and feedback from inspection leads and team members. All strategic scrutiny teams are represented on a forum to discuss potential improvements to inspection methodology from experiences across the different workstreams and promote consistency wherever possible. When reading the records of people who use services during inspection, a proportion of the sample is double read to ensure consistency of evaluations and we provide training for all record readers.

At the reporting stage of our inspections, inspection leads present their inspection team’s findings and draft report to a ‘quality and consistency’ panel with representation from each partner scrutiny body for discussion and comment. Reports are then issued to the area inspected for an accuracy check before final editing and publication.

Information governance

Our approach to processing personal data is set out in full in our organisational privacy notice.

Covid-19

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on social work and social care services across the country. Because of this, most of our strategic inspection work was paused between March 2020 and spring 2021. Since then, strategic inspections have recommenced with some adjustments to reflect the ongoing risks posed by covid-19 and the pressure on local authority and partnership services.

We continue to be responsive to the trends of the pandemic as we plan for and deliver inspection activities. We have also incorporated learning from the pandemic period in relation to our use of technology, and expect to be using a blend of onsite and distance approaches to carry out inspections moving forward.

Update - January 2024

What we have done since our last briefing in September 2023

We have been working alongside the four areas that came forward to be part of more detailed work.

• Aberdeen city
• Dundee city
• Dumfries and Galloway
• Na h-Eileanan Siar (Western Isles)

We now have staff survey responses from these four areas.  We have reviewed these alongside all the evidence we gathered earlier this year from the national survey and our review of existing literature.

This has helped us develop our understanding of social work’s contribution to upholding the rights of disabled children and young people in Scotland. 

We have used our findings so far to help us plan our next steps and inform the key questions we will ask children, families and staff.

Our stakeholder community has continued to be involved, helping to shape our approach to engagement activities.   

Planning for our next steps is well underway in the four areas and we are grateful for all the time and effort they have already given to this review. 

Next steps

We are now entering the busiest stage of our review and will be working with our four areas on the following.

In January we will be reviewing 30 children’s social work’s records in each of the areas.  This will help us build our understanding of the effectiveness of assessments, plans and reviews in ensuring children benefit from the right help and the right time.  These records have been sampled randomly.

In January we will ask each of the four areas to share a video and information leaflet with children and their parents or carers to inform them of our review and invite them to become involved.

Between 22 January and 29 February we will open an electronic questionnaire for children and young people to complete online.  This will be one of a range of ways we will gather views directly from children and young people.  The arrangements for completing the questionnaire will be shared by each of the four local authorities.

In February we will be on-site in each of the four areas.  We want to gather the views of children and their parents or carers and the staff who work with them.  We will meet with children wherever they are most comfortable.  For some children this might be with friends or family.  For others it might be alongside workers who are important to them.  We hope the important people in children’s lives will help us to do this.  We will work alongside staff in each of the four areas to ensure we are inclusive and respect children’s rights in our approach.

If you have any questions for the review team, they can be contacted via email on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

We’d like to thank everyone who has been involved in this review.

Visiting

Test

Error response form

What is the error response process?

The Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010 specifies that the Care Inspectorate must produce a report for all inspections carried out. Section 57(2) also states that the provider of the inspected service must receive an initial draft of the report and an opportunity to comment on it.

Collaboration with you as a provider is key to our inspection approach. Ongoing professional dialogue and thorough inspection feedback make the process as transparent as possible and allows for discussion and clarification of any uncertainties early on. You also have opportunities to evidence any successes, achievements and plans for improvement throughout inspections. This collaborative approach should mean that the information in the draft report is familiar to you, and nothing comes as a surprise. However, we welcome your feedback and have an error response process which we encourage you to use. This fulfils our legal obligations and includes the error response form (ERF) for you to give your comments and feedback on the contents of the draft inspection report.

Other ways to feedback to the Care Inspectorate

We understand that sometimes you may wish to share your views on our general approach to inspections. The error response process is primarily about a specific inspection report, but there are other ways in which you can provide feedback to us.

For example, you can provide feedback using the Inspection Satisfaction Questionnaire process. If you are unhappy with how the Care Inspectorate has carried out our regulatory functions, you can make a complaint here.

Accessing the ERF

When we send you your draft report in eForms, we will include a letter prompting you to review it and return an ERF. This video shows you how to log into your eForms account.

Completing the ERF

Once you have reviewed the draft report you can respond to us by completing the ERF. We want to ensure the report is an accurate representation of the service at the time of the inspection and that the report is clear to the public. You can therefore comment on any aspect of the report.

You can access the ERF from the ‘documents’ section of your eForms (screenshot below). On a mobile device this may appear as a drop-down menu.

When you are in the documents page you should select ‘current’ from the menu on the left, or from the drop-down menu.

You will then see the ERF, which you can open by clicking on it.

When you open the form, you will have the option to select that you agree for us to finalise the report without changes. If you select that you agree and submit this to us, we will receive a ‘blank’ ERF stating that you agree for the report to be published without any changes. It will be finalised and appear on our website shortly after.

If you select that you do not agree to it being finalised without changes, you will then need to give us more details by completing the form. To tell us about the issues you have identified, you need to create an item on the form. You should use the ‘new’ button to create an item for each issue you have identified; this allows us to easily see each issue you are raising and respond to them in turn.

Complete each part of the form. Select the section of the report that your issue relates to from the drop-down menu. This means we can easily navigate to the correct area of the report to review it. If there is more than one issue in the same section of the report, create a new item for each one.

There are then two free-text fields for you to complete. In the ‘Describe the Error’ section you should explain the issue you have identified and, if helpful, copy the relevant section of the report text. Use the ‘Proposed Correction’ box to offer us your alternative suggestion for this section of the report.

There is also the option to upload attachments to the ERF. Please ensure these are relevant to the inspection, clearly named and referred to in the ‘Proposed Correction’ box. This allows the inspector to assess whether the attachment is relevant to our inspection findings.

You do not need to complete the form in one go; you can save it and return to it later. If you want to amend any item you have created, you can click on it to re-open and edit it. Once you are ready to send the ERF to us, click the submit button to send it through eForms.

You have 10 working days from receipt of the draft report to respond. Extensions to this may be agreed by your inspector in certain circumstances. If we do not hear from you in the agreed timescale, the report will automatically be finalised and published on our website.

The ERF is the only opportunity to comment on the report and once we respond to you with a letter, the report will usually be finalised and published on our website. To ensure we can respond appropriately, please be clear when describing any issues and proposed corrections and make sure you create new items for each issue.

Please note the inspection completion date that appears on the front page of the report is the date formal feedback was given and is populated on the report automatically by our systems. The service details reflect the details we have on the digital portal. You can review these and keep them up to date by logging into the digital portal.

How we respond

When we receive an ERF, the lead inspector will respond to you using our error response letter. This is sent from the eForms system in the same way as the ERF. Our timescale for this is 10 working days from the date the ERF is submitted. If we need longer than this to respond, for example due to staff absence or needing more time to review our evidence, the inspector will advise you of this.

In all but very exceptional circumstances (see below) the process is complete once we have sent the error response letter, and the report will be published on the website.

If we need to clarify any of the points raised, the lead inspector will contact you to arrange a telephone call or meeting, to ensure we provide an accurate response.

A team manager or more senior manager from the Care Inspectorate may also be involved in reviewing the inspection evidence with the lead inspector and advise on any changes. The letter will outline if a team manager or anyone else has been involved.

It is important to note that, if you ask us to amend our draft report or revise the evaluations (grades) awarded, we may need to review all our evidence from the inspection to reach a conclusion. This is because our findings are based on our overall assessment of the evidence we look at. Evaluations (grades) are based on our grading criteria, which requires us to consider the strengths and weaknesses of a service based on the evidence we have gathered.

There are certain circumstances in which we may accept your proposed correction and amend our report. These include where our review of the evidence shows that:

• the report contains factual inaccuracies, such as names, times, dates and places,
• the report does not reflect an accurate representation of the evidence,
• evaluations (grades) are based on inaccuracies or discrepancies in the evidence,
• evaluations (grades) can be demonstrated to be unjustified as they are not reflective of the relevant evidence (which is not in dispute).

In most instances, if you tell us, in your ERF, that you feel the evaluation (grade) we have awarded is inaccurate against our grading criteria, a team manager will review the evidence gathered on inspection, and any additional evidence with the inspector. They will reach a conclusion as to whether this supports a change in evaluation (grade).

Depending on the findings from their review, the team manager could conclude:

• the proposed evaluations are appropriate,
• the proposed evaluations be increased,
• the proposed evaluations be decreased.

If the team manager concludes that the evidence does not support the evaluation (grade) in the draft report and a higher evaluation (grade) is more accurate, we will inform you of this in our response letter. The report and evaluations will be amended and published on our website.

In very rare circumstances, the team manager may conclude that a lower evaluation than the one originally awarded is more appropriate. In these exceptional cases, the error response letter will clearly explain why  this decision has been made. We will arrange a meeting with you to explain our decision and the processes that have been followed. You will then have an opportunity to make comment on the revised draft report by email before it is finalised.

If our review of the evidence does not identify any errors, we will not make changes to the report. This will be clearly stated in our response letter.