By Claire Neary, Senior Policy Adviser

The Care Inspectorate’s improvement website, The Hub, has been on an improvement journey of its own over past few months. The new redesigned site is now live with much more content and improved functionality to help users make the most of the information and resources on the site.

New partners and more content

The Hub has always been a central point of access to a wide range of information from improvement resources, training, events, Care Inspectorate programmes and publications to information on national policy and legislation.

Now, visitors will find a much broader range of improvement and practice resources, not only from the Care Inspectorate but also from partner bodies including the Scottish Social Services Council, Healthcare Improvement Scotland, NHS Education for Scotland and Scottish Government. There is a wealth of information on subjects relevant to the social care and social work sector in Scotland, the UK and further afield.

We have partnered with the Scottish Government to host their new training directory for early years practitioners, one of the commitments in the Quality Action Plan for delivering Blueprint for 2020: Expansion of Early Learning and Childcare in Scotland.

To increase The Hub’s focus on encouraging services to start their own improvement journey, we have also partnered with Social Services Knowledge Scotland (SSKS) to develop a new section on research resources and skills.

The website also now hosts all Scottish Government funded self-directed support resources in a new library section, which we hope both practitioners and those accessing their own support, their families and carers will use.

Improved functionality

As we got to work redesigning the site, a priority for us was to make sure it would be as user-friendly as possible. The Hub is designed to help users find the information and resources which are directly relevant to their service type.

With a couple of clicks you can now search and browse by care setting our extensive library of improvement publications and guidance, research, events, weekly news bulletins and case studies, with the option of filtering further by topic area. In each care setting section you will also find links to other areas of the site tailored to your interests, such as policy summaries, events, the national training directory for early learning and childcare and Care Inspectorate programmes and publications.

This is a common feature throughout the site, which was designed to allow users to access the information they require through a number of entry points and with as few clicks as possible. When you browse The Hub you will see that each area now provides signposts to related content across the site.

Research has become easier with filters that allow all resources on a specific topic area to be pulled together into one search. Users also have the option of linking directly into SSKS’s digital library with free access to a number of journals and books.

You can create and keep your own personalised library with the My Library feature. So you are able to save favourite documents, news bulletins to read later, or create an induction pack for new employees with all the relevant documents for your care setting.

We hope you find hub.careinspectorate.com useful and user-friendly. Redesigning the site is only the first step in its development, which we hope will continue to go from strength to strength with your support. The Hub team is on hand at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to help with any queries you may have and we’d be delighted to get any feedback or suggestions on how we can keep improving this site.