Partnership guide

Partnership guide documents

01   

Partnership guide

02

JIAS Integration and Outcomes QI Framework

03

Overview

04

Inspection co-ordinator profile

05

Provider and services template

06

Engagement Framework

07

Provider Engagement Guidance

08

Position Statement

09

Evidence log

10

Review of records sampling guidance

11

Record review guidance

12

Record review template

13

PIR

14

Guidance for remote access to records

15

Guidance for onsite review of records

16

Initial Case Tracker

17

Final Case Tracker

18 

TATP/Scrutiny timetable

19

TATP Co-ordinator Guidance

20

Scrutiny focus groups

21

Evaluation criteria

22

Partnership meetings

 

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Why your annual return is so important

This year's annual return will be available to service providers for completion between Tuesday 6 January and Tuesday 17 February 2026.

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.

Even inactive services must submit an annual return.

If a service was registered on or after 1 October 2025, 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.

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:

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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Datastore

Our datastore is an online statistics tool for professionals who need to know about care services in Scotland.  It can provide information such as the number of care homes for older people in a particular area, or how many complaints have been upheld in the last year.

The Datastore provides information about the type and quality of care services in Scotland.  All current services (as at the date of the file) are included in the datastore, services that cancelled since the last update are removed and newly registered services are added each month.

The Datastore is available to download in two formats: an excel XLSX format which contains some pre-prepared pivot tables to assist with data analysis and a CSV format which only contains the data.  These files are updated monthly.  There is also a tab available in the XLSX file which has definitions and notes on each of the data fields and it is recommended that this is used alongside the data as a reference.

All content is available under the Open Government License, unless otherwise stated.  

Our Intelligence Team compile and manage the information within the Datastore.  For help using this or any queries relating to its content or use then please email our Contact Centre

You can find the latest datastores here. 

If you have any queries regarding this or need more information, please email our Contact Centre

Datastores, year-end, are available below:

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Children and young people subject to compulsory supervision orders

Joint inspection of services for children and young people subject to compulsory supervision orders living at home with their parents

In August 2025 we started working with our scrutiny partners to take a more focused look at the experiences and outcomes of children and young people subject to compulsory supervision orders and living at home with parents. On the 8 July 2025 we hosted a webinar to share our plans. We will complete up to four inspections with this focus by April 2026.

More information:

If you are looking for information about previous joint inspection programmes please follow the link below: 

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Key messages

Key messages from the joint inspection of services for children and young people at risk of harm between 2021 and 2025

The key messages have been aggregated and cannot reflect the experiences of all children, young people and their families.

Key message 1

Effective responses and early recognition of risks by staff were helping to keep many children and young people safe. Staff were confident and competent at identifying a range of concerns for children and young people. The persistence, however, of the risks to children and young people posed by domestic abuse across Scotland, means it is imperative that all partnerships continue to prioritise collaborative responses to this.

Key message 2

The provision of early help and support to prevent harm was a strategic priority in almost all partnership areas we inspected. This support had made a positive difference to children and their families in these partnership areas.

Key message 3

The identification and response to concerns raised about an older young person in the community, or concerns if they were a risk to themselves or others, were not consistently effective. Overall, staff’s response to concerns was more robust for younger children subject to abuse and neglect.

Key message 4

Staff across all partnerships had invested significant time and effort into building and maintaining strong, positive relationships with the children and young people they supported. These relationships were built on an understanding of trauma informed practice and a strong values-based culture of involving families in decisions made about their lives. The majority of children, young people and families we heard from appreciated the relationships they had with staff.

Key message 5

Outcomes for children and young people in relation to their mental health remained a significant challenge for staff to address. This, coupled with an increasing complexity of need and a difficulty in access and availability of suitable resources, meant that staff across partnerships were not confident these outcomes were being met, despite their efforts to do so.

Key message 6

We saw a correlation between how well partnerships involved children and young people, and the evaluation given for the impact of services on them. While the majority of children and young people were listened to in their individual care planning and support, this was not consistently the case when it came to how well their views influenced service developments. The views of children and young people were more readily sought if they were care experienced than if they were involved in protective processes.

Key message 7

Staff, overall, reported more confidence in their immediate first line managers rather than strategic leaders. However, we noted clear links between staff’s confidence in strategic leadership, systematic approaches to quality assurance and improved outcomes for children and young people.

Key message 8

Effectiveness in the gathering and analysis of quantitative and qualitative information about the impact of services, and feedback from children and young people about the differences services were making, were clear areas for improvement across most partnerships. This was also the case for how partnerships sought and used the views of children and young people to develop wider children’s services planning.

Key message 9

We undertook some joint inspections during the period of the Covid-19 pandemic. In these, we found the quality of collaborative responses to risk to children and young people was effective in the majority of cases. We also heard many examples of staff going above and beyond their remits to ensure vulnerable families were helped. Staff also told us how well supported they had felt from their immediate line managers and colleagues across services during this challenging period.

Key message 10

We continued to see an improved picture in relation to our evaluation of key processes of assessment, planning and reviewing the care and support for individual children and young people, although we still saw variability in quality. The quality of chronologies in supporting effective decision making remained inconsistent.

Key message 11

Not all children and young people were benefitting from equity of availability or access to independent advocacy. The extent to which independent advocacy provision was embedded varied across partnerships. This meant that, for some children and young people, they had limited means of fully expressing their views to someone independent of decision-making processes in their lives.

Key message 12

Levels of poverty and deprivation across many areas challenged partnerships’ ability to address an increase in the volume and complexity of concerns about children and young people. Without further national attention, the wide-ranging impact of these issues will continue to hamper the efforts of staff to effectively sustain improvement in addressing the holistic needs of children and young people at risk of harm and their families.

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