How you can get involved if you have experience of using services
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.
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How 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.
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Justice social work: Self-evaluation of performance, quality and outcomes
Aim 2 of the National Strategy for Community Justice is to “Ensure that robust and high-quality community interventions and public protection arrangements are consistently available across Scotland”. In relation to community sentences, there is an associated priority action to “Ensure that those given community sentences are supervised and supported appropriately to protect the public, promote desistence from offending and enable rehabilitation by delivering high quality, consistently available, trauma-informed services and programmes.”
Key to delivering on these intentions, and the overarching aim, is the ability of justice social work services to demonstrate that the supervision and support offered to those on community sentences is of a high quality. To develop an overview of what was working well and where improvement was required in this regard, the Care Inspectorate undertook a national review, using a self-evaluation approach between September 2024 and March 2025.
The review sought to:
- evaluate the extent to which justice social work services were able to evidence performance, quality and outcomes in relation to community-based sentences.
- explore the factors that impacted justice social work services’ ability to confidently and robustly demonstrate the effectiveness and impact of community support and supervision.
As part of this work, all 32 local authority justice social work services completed a structured self-evaluation in which they considered their current approaches to gathering and reporting on performance, quality and outcomes and the factors that were enabling or hindering this work.
Thereafter, we undertook a range of activities to validate the self-evaluations in six local authority justice services. This allowed us to better understand the strengths and challenges at a local level. The activities included:
- a review of documentary evidence referenced in the local authority self-evaluation
- focus groups and interviews with senior leaders, operational managers and staff
- focus groups and interviews with people on community sentences
We published a report of our findings in May 2025. The report contains more detail on the methods we used.
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Overview
As part of our strategic scrutiny plan for this year we will 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 or carers.
One of the foundations of the Promise is about supporting families to stay together and emphasis is placed on the importance of providing timely support to ensure children can stay in their families wherever it is safe to do so. By considering the experiences of children who are subject to compulsory supervision orders and living at home with their parents, we aim to better understand what is helping to improve outcomes for children and young people and what is getting in the way.
Children and young people have told us about the importance of being able to experience sincere human contact and enduring relationships. Our approach therefore looks carefully at how well services and systems are organised so that children and young people can experience continuity in their care and develop and sustain lasting relationships. Our inspections also consider whether legal measures are being used appropriately to achieve security and stability for children.
Staff who are well trained and who feel valued and empowered are more likely to be able to provide high quality services for children and young people. We therefore explore how well staff are supported to carry out their task.
We know that partners recognise that assessment and planning are critical to ensure the safety of, and improving outcomes for, children and young people. However, we also know that performance in assessment and planning is not as consistently strong across the country as it needs to be. We will look to see if robust quality assurance and high quality reflective supervision are in place to support these important processes.
Strong collaborative leadership is essential and challenging in the context of providing high quality public services in an integrated landscape. We consider the effectiveness of leadership and how well leaders can demonstrate what difference they are making to the lives of children and young people.
Read more about the focus of these inspections here.
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Thematic review of prison-based social work
In July 2023, we commenced a joint thematic review of prison-based social work services, in partnership with His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons in Scotland (HMIPS). Phase 1 of this thematic review considered the strengths and challenges in the governance, leadership, and accountability of prison-based social work services in Scotland and highlighted areas for improvement. The review sought to explore:
- governance, leadership and direction
- partnership working, including commissioning arrangements and resourcing
- policies, procedures, and guidance
- management and support of staff
- performance management and quality assurance
As part of the review, we gathered the views of people in custody who had been working with prison-based social work services. Other activities included:
- a series of scoping meetings with stakeholders including the Scottish Government, the SPS, Social Work Scotland, the Risk Management Authority, and Community Justice Scotland
- a review of relevant strategies, policies, guidance, procedures and other documentation relating to prison-based social work services
- a staff survey distributed to all prison-based social work staff
- focus groups and interviews with key partners.
We published a report of our findings in April 2024. The report contains more details on the methods we used.
Evaluating the quality of prison-based social work practice was outwith the scope of this first phase of the review. Within the report, a commitment was made to a further phase of work in this regard. In the longer term, this will aim to consider the quality of prison-based social work practice, the efficiency of collaboration with community-based justice social work services, and effectiveness in delivering intended outcomes for people.
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