We have published the new quality framework for housing support services and offender accommodation. It reflects Scotland’s Health and Social Care Standards, which are rights-based, person-led and outcome-focused. The standards are relevant for care delivery, planning, commissioning, and assessment.

The primary purpose of the framework is to support services to self-evaluate their own performance. It will also be used by our inspectors to provide independent assurance about the quality of care and support. By setting out what we expect to see in high-quality care and support provision, it can help support improvement too.

We have engaged with providers, people who experience care and our inspectors about the framework.   We also completed test inspections across a range of different services that came under these registrations types to ensure the framework is suitable in practice for the wide variety of services that we regulate.

The framework was originally due to be published in April last year, however we made the decision to delay this due to pandemic.

As a result of the pandemic, we have added in an additional key question (7) to the framework. This Key question focuses on ‘how good is our care and support during the Covid-19 pandemic?’. We have consulted with a range of providers over this additional key question via email and small virtual focus groups.

You can download the framework from here