Scotland's social care regulator, the Care Inspectorate, has today published its annual report.

It reveals that the number of care services in Scotland which received good, very good or excellent grades for the quality of care and support they provided remains at more than 92%.

But it also shows that the number of people who contacted the Care Inspectorate with a concern about care services increased in the past year to 3,788 compared to 3,237 the year before.

The Care Inspectorate inspects and regulates more than 14,000 care services across Scotland including care homes, nurseries, childminders and housing support services.

 It also regulates adoption and fostering services, secure care, school accommodation, nurse agencies, and offender accommodation.

The regulator has legal powers to take action to improve services where necessary and investigate complaints.

In the past year, the Care Inspectorate focused its inspection work on services which presented the most risk, and also increased the intensity of inspections.

That saw it inspect 7,825 care services, with the majority of those inspections unannounced.

Paul Edie, chair of the Care Inspectorate said: "It is a time of considerable change across health and social care and it is important to ensure that there is a robust and rigorous inspection process in place.

"The focus of our scrutiny must be on the outcomes experienced by people who rely on care services."

Annette Bruton, Chief Executive, Care Inspectorate added: "Almost everyone will use a care service at some point in their life and the public have a right to know how these services are performing.

"Where standards are not up to scratch, we will continue to seek improvement where possible and use our legal powers to protect vulnerable people from harm wherever necessary.

"Whilst the majority of care services are good, we must continue to ensure that we help improve those that are below standards, both across children's and older people's services.

"I am determined to strike the right balance between regulation, inspection, assurance and improvement."

In the past year, the Care Inspectorate has developed a new approach to planning its inspections.

This included working with other scrutiny bodies to continue a programme of joint inspections of services in the community.

Joint inspections can include working with partners such as Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary for Scotland, Healthcare Improvement Scotland and Education Scotland.

These joint inspections look at how well services are provided across any given community partnership area and how well those services are working together.

The annual report also highlights the establishment of specialist inspection teams, which ensures that inspectors are working in the subject area in which they have professional expertise and experience.

At 31 March 2014, there were 14,090 registered care services operating in Scotland.

The majority of these services perform well: 87% of services that had been inspected and graded by the end of the year had grades of good or better for every theme.

Over the year, 10,086 (72%) had maintained or improved on grades of good or better for every quality theme since 1 April 2013.

A total of 3,788 concerns were raised with Care Inspectorate in 2013/14, compared to 3,237 the year before.

In 2013/14 1,129 complains were upheld, compared to 1,186 the previous year.

The full report is available here: Annual report 2013-14