We have published an updated version of the quality framework for care homes for children and young people and special residential schools.

What has changed?

We have introduced an updated key question 6 to support services when they evaluate how well they are delivering positive outcomes for children and young people in their service. Answering key question 6, ‘What is our capacity to keep the promise and ensure children and young people grow up loved, safe and respected – so that they realise their full potential?’, helps services find out how good the care and support that children and young people are experiencing really is. It also assists in developing ways of improving these experiences and outcomes - with advice, guidance and practical tools for both self-evaluation and producing a development and improvement plan. As such, key question 6 does not contain quality indicators or quality illustrations, but is instead centred around self-evaluation and the service’s capacity to improve. A new introduction also provides more context on how the framework can be used to support services to evaluate the quality of care and support provided. 

We have refreshed the contents of key questions 1 to 5 with updates to some of the key areas and quality illustrations. When we consulted with providers and our regulatory partners at the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC), we received valuable feedback on how the quality illustrations could align more closely with the promise aspirations. We have used this feedback alongside other national policy drivers to update and refresh key questions 1 to 5 and develop supportive toolboxes under each quality indicator.

The previous key question 7 document now forms part of the full quality framework and was last updated in March 2024. This means we have not made any changes to key question 7, which inspectors will continue to use proportionately for structuring our evidence and evaluations at inspection. This version of the quality framework also includes an updated  core assurances section.

What does this mean for inspections?

We will continue to use key question 7 for inspections and will only use key questions 1 to 5 should we have specific concerns that require us to look at a quality indicator in more detail. This is because key question 7 consolidates the outcomes set out in questions 1 to 5. We hope this will support the transparency of evaluations at inspection because services using the framework for self-evaluation know they are benchmarking themselves in a similar way, and to the same standards, as the Care Inspectorate. During our consultation people told us that a greater level of detail in key questions 1 to 5 was helpful for a deeper level of self-evaluation on particular areas of practice.  

In addition, our work to develop a new approach to inspections, known as promise assurance, will continue alongside the rollout of the new quality framework. We will share more information on this and provide an overview of the updated quality framework at a webinar in April 2026. You can book a place on the webinar now. 

What people told us

To help shape this review we issued a survey through our provider update for children and young people services and provided updates at local and national residential childcare groups and events. We received generally positive feedback on the existing quality framework with some areas that could be improved. These are shown below.

 You said

 We did
Clearer links are needed to the promise and how services are a vehicle for achieving this.  We have developed key question 6, which focuses on the service’s capacity tokeep the promise. This will allow services to more confidently evidence the quality of outcomes children and young people are experiencing. Equally importantly, the process of self-evaluation will also enable any improvements to be identified.
It was not always clear how frameworks could be used to support improvement. The revised introduction and updates to key questions 1 to 5 are intended to support services with their improvement journey. We have also included updated improvement toolboxes. These containa wide range of resources that can support your self-evaluation of any of the quality indicators.
There should be less focus on paperwork and processes and more focus on relationships. We recognise this is as being central to the promise. As such, it was a key consideration in developing key question 7, which we will continue to use for inspection. We have also incorporated more information on the core assurances in the updated framework. This provides more detail on how we take a proportionate approach by using these to evaluate the outcomes for children and young people.