About our roles

Our core roles

The Care Inspectorate employs 600 people from a diverse range of backgrounds, and they’re all amazing at what they do.

From inspection and improvement support specialists, to intelligence and digital specialists, and everyone in between – all are key to our work, championing high-quality care.  Find a career that will empower you to develop, collaborate and make a difference.  Together, we can change lives.

Read more about some of our roles and the work our teams do.

Our Scrutiny & Assurance teams provide independent assurance about the quality of care and support improvement and innovation.  Their role ensures the safety, protection and wellbeing of vulnerable children, adults and older people.  

The teams’ responsibilities are broad and include:

• Early learning and childcare services
• Children and young people’s services
• Adult services
• Registrations, variations and cancellations
• Complaints
• Inspection planning
• Justice
• Protection
• Enforcement

Roles within Scrutiny and Assurance include:

• Inspector
• Strategic Inspector
  

Overview of inspector role

What do our inspectors do?

As one of our inspectors, you’ll be central to our work and have a challenging and rewarding role in championing high-quality care.

You’ll be responsible for managing your own workload and lead on these actions for the registered care services you work with.

• Gathering and assessing intelligence and using your professional judgement to target scrutiny and improvement activities.
• Planning and carrying out scrutiny activities.
• Providing feedback to people experiencing care and service providers on the findings of scrutiny activities.
• Signposting good practice to support continuous improvement.
• Providing professional advice and guidance to support improvement and innovation.
• Providing briefings for senior managers relating to specific events which impact on regulated care services.

Here’s what Hillary, one of our inspectors, says about her job.

There’s never been a better time to join us

It’s our job to ensure care for everyone, everywhere in Scotland is as good as it can be.  It’s a big job and we need your help!

This is an exciting time to join the Care Inspectorate.  You will have the opportunity to be at the heart of change and help shape the future of care for everyone.

We’re looking for talented people to join us to make a difference.  Specialists who understand how to put the needs and rights of children, young people, adults and older people in Scotland at the heart of delivering social care and how to lead improvement too.  

Now is the perfect time to come and join us.  We’ve recently changed our recruitment process and how we assess new people.  We’re looking to attract inspectors from a broader range of professional backgrounds.  So, if you are as passionate as us, and think a career in care could be right for you, read our FAQs here.

About you

As one of our inspectors, you’ll share our determination that care should work well for everyone, every time.  You’ll be confident about what good quality care looks like and how to deliver it.  Drawing on your resilience and adaptability, you’ll be able to work on your own initiative or as part of a team, managing competing priorities. You will apply your excellent analytical and writing skills to produce inspection reports that are clear, concise and focus on good outcomes for people.  Establishing effective relationships is vital for success in the role and you’ll be confident working with a wide range of people and building effective networks with partners. 

Based on your professional background, you’ll work in one of three specialist areas.

Adults services

As one of our adult inspectors, you’ll work in our inspection, complaints or registration teams, with services across the public, voluntary and private sectors.

You’ll work with people experiencing care, care service providers, managers and staff and be confident to support and advise on improvement.  You’re likely to have experience delivering improvement in a service, partnership working, applying good practice guidance and be able to respond to and manage change.

We're customer focused and treat complaints in an open, fair and objective way.  As a complaints inspector, you’ll be a good supportive listener who understands what is important to people and resolve complaints accurately and effectively.

Early learning and childcare (ELC) services

As one of our ELC inspectors, you’ll work in our inspection, complaints or registration teams, with services across the public and private sectors.

You’ll have recent experience supporting the delivery of high-quality care and learning for children and have significant knowledge of current developments and challenges within the sector.  You’ll work with children and families experiencing ELC services and service providers, managers and staff and be confident to support and advise on improved outcomes for children.  You’re likely to have experience delivering improvement in a service, partnership working, applying good practice guidance and be able to respond to and manage change.

Children and young people (CYP) services

As one of our CYP inspectors, you’ll work with services across the public, voluntary and private sectors.

You’ll have experience in assessment and critical analysis.  You will listen carefully to children, young people and their families to understand what is important to them, how they are experiencing care and support and the difference services are making to their lives.  You’ll work with care service providers, managers and staff and be confident to support and advise on improvement.  You’re likely to have experience delivering improvement in a service, partnership working, applying good practice guidance and be able to respond to and manage change.

We are a proud Corporate Parent with an ambitious plan to take forward our work.  We have a group of Young Inspection Volunteers (young people with lived experience of care) who support us with this and enhance and influence our work.  Inspectors work alongside our Young Inspection Volunteers in lots of ways and there are exciting and innovative plans to develop this partnership approach further.

Our Strategy and Improvement teams focus on helping to improve outcomes for people who use care services in Scotland.  They make sure that the voice of people using care, and their carers, is central to our work.  They also support the wellbeing of our staff so that staff are equipped with the right skills and support and feel motivated and confident to excel in their role. 

The teams’ responsibilities are broad and include:

• Communications
• Corporate Parenting
• Improvement support
• Information governance
• Intelligence
• Organisational and workforce development
• Policy
• Professional practice and standards

Our IT, Transformation and Digital teams deliver our internal IT services.  They also develop our digital systems and business processes to support our scrutiny and assurance work.

The teams’ responsibilities include:

• IT service delivery
• Digital transformation
• Business change

The Corporate and Customer Services teams provide a range of core services which are central to our operations, and those of the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) and the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR), as part of a shared service agreement.

The teams’ responsibilities include:

• Business and customer support
• Contact centre
• Estates, health and safety
• Finance and corporate governance
• Human resources
• Legal