Early learning and childcare improvement programme
Early learning and childcare expansion
From August 2020, the Scottish Government will fund 1140 hours of early learning and childcare (ELC) for all three and four year olds and eligible two year olds.
All nurseries, playgroups and childminders providing funded places will be required to meet specific criteria as part of the new National Standard, including achieving good or better Care Inspectorate quality evaluation. They will also be required to carry out continuous professional development.
Local authorities are responsible for ensuring that funded entitlement is available for all eligible children in their area.
Care Inspectorate ELC improvement programme
The Scottish Government has funded an improvement programme, which will be delivered by the Care Inspectorate, to support early learning and childcare settings who offer funded places and are not currently meeting the quality criteria in the National Standard.
The aim of the improvement programme is to support funded settings to make the improvements they need to meet the National Standard quality criteria.
Selected providers and staff will be invited to participate in learning events and will work with the programme to make improvements. In addition to the learning sessions, the programme will include learning networks, some individual improvement support for providers and settings and develop good practice resources.
The programme will work with local authorities to support the improvement of early learning and childcare settings within their authority area.
Further information about the early learning and childcare improvement programme will be shared when it becomes available.
Information for parents/carers
Parents or carers can enrol their children for funded early learning and childcare.
Families should visit the Parent Club website to find out how to enrol for funded early learning and childcare places in their area.
Local authorities have individual application processes and deadlines. The Parent Club website will link to your local authority for more information.
For more information you can contact the improvement team on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Related information
Early learning and childcare expansion (gov.scot)
Scottish Government news article 10 January 2020
Twitter - #ELCExpansion or #ELCImprove
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How to use our 'Registered by' widget
What is the 'Registered by' widget?
The widget is a logo with some coding behind it that can be displayed on any website. Each registered care service has its own widget to connect directly to its own information pages on the Care Inspectorate website.
So, if you are a care service and you want to show your website visitors that you are registered with us, you can download the widget and display it on your website. When your website visitors click on the widget, a new window will open that displays the Care Inspectorate information page for your service. Your own webpage will still be open.
Who can use the widget?
Anyone can use the widget, but they must abide by our terms and conditions, which are at the bottom of this page.
How do I download the widget?
Go to the information page for your service, on this website.
Click on the ‘Care Inspectorate Registered Widget’ tab in the menu bar on the left.
Follow the instructions. You may need to ask your website administrator, hosting provider or website developer to help you.
Add the embed code to your website where you want it to appear. For example, in a footer, a sidebar and so on.
The widget code will work on your website straight away.
Troubleshooting
This is a simple and straightforward piece of coding and should not cause issues. If you do have difficulty, first contact your web administrator. If your web administrator is unable to resolve the issue, please email us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Terms and conditions
You can use the widget:
- in relation to any care service registered by the Care Inspectorate.
You cannot:
- use it in any way that would deliberately mislead people
- modify it in any way
- use it any way that would bring the Care Inspectorate into disrepute
- sell it or sublicence it
- use it in any way that could intentionally damage or overburden the Care Inspectorate website
- put anything around the widget that implies that the Care Inspectorate endorses you or your service.
Other conditions of use
The widget is designed to be used in conjunction with the Care Inspectorate website. Accordingly, use of the widget is also governed by our website's core privacy notice.
Disclaimer of warranties
We make our best efforts to make sure the widget is always available and provides accurate information, but it is provided 'as is', with no warranties.
Limitation of liability
The Care Inspectorate disclaims any responsibility for any harm resulting from your use of the widget.
You understand and agree that you access and/or use the widget at your own discretion and risk, and that you will be solely responsible for any damages to your computer system or loss of data that results from accessing or using the widget.
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Staff survey
Inspectors use a survey to gather the views of all staff who work directly with children and young people at risk of harm, about the difference that services are making to their lives and how they are being helped to achieve positive outcomes. In addition to the staff survey, we will invite children and young people, as well as parents and carers, to complete surveys to gather their views about their experiences of services.
CPPs are asked to distribute the staff survey directly to their staff and the Care Inspectorate will provide a link to this at the briefing for partners about the inspection process. The survey takes around 15 - 20 minutes to complete and is aimed at those people who work with children at risk of harm and their families, including health visitors, school nurses, doctors, teachers, social workers, police officers, and staff working in the voluntary and independent sector.
Staff do not have to provide their name, just their current occupation/professional role and job type. Three weeks are allocated for its completion and the analysis of the results are subsequently shared with the CPP.
Back to Phase One - need to know more?
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Support for improvement
The Care Inspectorate’s link inspector arrangements for each local authority area serve six main purposes. These are:
- monitoring the performance and quality of social work services;
- monitoring the performance of the partnership’s public protection arrangements;
- identifying factors which are supporting social work services to deliver good or improved outcomes and any barriers;
- highlighting risks to the above and their potential impact;
- identifying good practice within social work service and disseminating these more widely;
- supporting partners efforts to build capacity for continuous improvement.
Following each joint inspection, the link inspector continues to work with the CPP with an appropriate level of focus on improvement activity recorded in the CPP’s action plan. Where necessary, they will provide support and challenge in agreed activities and/or signpost CPPs to appropriate sources of assistance. This may include support from other scrutiny bodies.
When a partnership’s performance in key areas of practice has been evaluated as either ‘weak’ or ‘unsatisfactory’, the Care Inspectorate and partners may conduct progress review inspection activity to provide assurance that effective action is being taken by the CPP to reduce risks and address areas of concern. In these circumstances the intention and timescale for follow-up scrutiny will be recorded in the published report.
Where the findings of the inspection identify significant concerns, the link inspector may have a more formal monitoring role to provide senior managers in the Care Inspectorate and scrutiny partners with assurance that appropriate action is being taken to address weaknesses.
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Sharing information with other inspection bodies
Scrutiny bodies work together through a shared risk assessment process within Local Area Networks (LAN) to identify and agree the key scrutiny risks in each of Scotland’s 32 council areas. Each LAN is responsible for sharing local information and intelligence between scrutiny bodies, carrying out risk assessments and for engaging productively with respective councils around scrutiny activity.
Inspection findings are shared with scrutiny partners and other relevant inspectorates for the purposes of contributing to this shared risk assessment process which is led by Audit Scotland.
The National Scrutiny Plan for local government is one of the key outputs from the shared risk assessment work.
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