Joint inspections of services for children and young people at risk of harm
At the request of Scottish Ministers, between 2021 and 2025 the Care Inspectorate led on joint inspections of services for children and young people at risk of harm.
The remit of these joint inspections was to consider the effectiveness of services for children and young people up to the age of 18 at risk of harm. The inspections looked at the differences community planning partnerships are making to the lives of children and young people at risk of harm and their families.
These joint inspections aimed to provide assurance on the extent to which services, working together, could demonstrate that:
- Children and young people are safer because risks have been identified early and responded to effectively.
- Children and young people’s lives improve with high-quality planning and support, ensuring they experience sustained, loving and nurturing relationships to keep them safe from further harm.
- Children and young people and families are meaningfully and appropriately involved in decisions about their lives. They influence service planning, delivery and improvement.
- Collaborative strategic leadership, planning and operational management ensure high standards of service delivery.
We will shortly be producing an overview report. You can access individual inspection reports here.
Read moreChildren and young people subject to compulsory supervision orders
These pages are currently under development.
Scottish Ministers have asked us to work with 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.
Our joint inspections will look at the services provided for them by health visitors, school nurses, teachers, doctors, social workers, police officers and lots of other people who work with them and their families.
We will be starting this programme of scrutiny in summer 2025 and we will complete three inspections with this focus by April 2026. We will continue to review and revise the approach over the course of these inspections.
Find out more information about our approach below:
Read moreGetting involved
What you think really matters. If we are inspecting your area, and you have experience of services, you may want to speak to us about the help that you have been getting.
We will offer a range of ways for you to give us feedback. As well as a survey we will arrange one-to-one discussions and group meetings. Our one-to-one discussions can take place in person, or we can contact you by phone or other ways such as Facetime or MS Teams.
If you give us information anonymously, we may not be able to get in contact with you if you raise concerns about your own safety or the safety of anyone else. If you have such concerns, we would encourage you to contact your local authority and ask for their child protection or adult protection service. You can also contact Childline on 0800 1111. If we have any concerns about the safety of individuals, we will share this with protection agencies in the relevant area.
Our inspection team also includes young inspection volunteers. These are young people aged 18 – 26 with experience of care services who help us with our inspections. If you are a young person, you can choose to speak with one of them and you can have someone to support you when you meet them. If you are a young person and want to know more about becoming a young inspection volunteer or how to get involved, click here to find out more.
Read moreMore details about our approach
Our inspections will report on the experiences of children and young people subject to compulsory supervision orders living at home with their parents. When we use the term ‘children and young people’ in this page we are referring to this group.
Through a joint scrutiny approach, we will consider the experiences and views of children and young people. We will explore how well services are directed and delivered to ensure children are supported to live at home within their families to achieve positive outcomes.
The scope and timeline of the joint inspections
- Our legislative basis is the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010, section 115.
- We undertake joint inspections with scrutiny partners, including Healthcare Improvement Scotland, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland and young inspection volunteers. At times, we also involve associate assessors in our joint inspections.
- We will identify up to four local authority areas in 2025/2026 in which to conduct our joint inspections.
- The joint inspections will have a multi-agency scrutiny approach, liaising with community planning partners and corporate parenting partners responsible and accountable for this area of practice.
- We will take a scoping approach to our joint inspections, that is, learning iteratively as the inspection progresses to determine the best ways to seek the evidence required.
- We will conduct each joint inspection over a 12-week period, publishing one final report per local authority area.
- We will focus on a retrospective two-year period and scrutinise the impact of services for children and young people in that period of time.
The principles of the joint inspections
We will use a rights-based approach in the joint inspections, embedding the experiences of children and young people at the heart of planning, implementation and analysis of findings. Our joint inspections are underpinned by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. For example, we respect the right of children and young people to have their views heard by making participation of children, young people and families a core element of our approach. Our approach and design will reflect what children and families have told us matter the most to them, as encapsulated within the Promise.
We will consider the planning and progress that has been made by children’s services partnerships as they seek to keep The Promise. We will consider the five Promise Foundations and related priorities of family, care, voice, people and scaffolding which enable children to grow up loved, safe and respected.
Our approach and framework
Our approach will be proportionate to the evidence required, with a hybrid model of on-site and virtual activities. Our methods will include gathering information from local partnerships about the relevant services they provide and reviewing publicly available documents.
We will use the quality framework for children and young people in need of care and protection (November 2022). This framework is informed by the principles of the European Framework for Quality Management (EFQM) model which incorporates three tenets:
- Direction – clarity of purpose and strategy to achieve aims
- Execution – implementation of the strategy through delivery
- Results – what results have been achieved
Our approach to reporting
We will publish one written report following each joint inspection. We are committed to improving accessible reporting specific to children and young people, this will involve further consultation with our young inspection volunteers.
In our report we will consider three key lines of enquiry. We will evaluate four quality indicators on our six-point scale. These are:
- Quality indicator 2.1: Impact on children and young people
- Quality indicator 5.3: Care planning, managing risk and effective intervention
- Quality indicator 5.4: Involving individual children, young people and families
- Quality indicator 9.2: Leadership of strategy and direction
Resources
Our resources pages provide information for community planning partnerships (CPP) about the process for the joint inspection of services for children and young people. This includes services for children under the age of 18 years, or young people up to 26 years if they have been previously looked after.
Read moreHow we do it
Our inspections last for a number of months. We collect information about the area before we visit it. This helps us to understand what happens there and what is affecting the way that services are being provided.
During the inspection, a team of inspectors from the Care Inspectorate, Education Scotland, HM Inspectorate of Constabulary Scotland and Health Improvement Scotland will:
- speak with the staff
- speak with children and young people and listen to their views
- speak with parents and carers
- read information about the children and young people.
This gives us the chance to find out if children, young people and their families are getting the help that they need and if services are making a difference to their lives. What individual people tell us during inspection is confidential. Our reports do not include any information about them or their family, or anything that could identify them. However, we do have a duty to pass on information if there are concerns about someone’s safety.
We have surveys for children, young people and families and we use and safeguard the data gathered from these in the same way as we do with what you tell us in person. Our approach to participation during inspection reflects the importance we give to hearing from children and young people. We also have a staff survey which also enables us to maximise the feedback we get from those working across services.
After our inspection, we publish a report on our website about what we found for the area. Our inspection reports set out what works well and what could improve. We expect the community planning partnership to take action on any recommendations we make for improvements.
