Duty of Candour
The new duty of candour came into effect on 1 April. It affects all health, social work and care services except childminders. It means that services must take specific steps to carry out their duty of candour when a serious adverse event happens. They will need to let the people affected know, offer to meet with them, and apologise. This is an important part of being open with people who experience care, and also learning from things that go wrong.
Starting from April 2019, care services and social work services must, by law, produce a short annual report showing the learning from their duty of candour incidents that year, publish it, and notify us that it has been published. That means the first annual report services produce will cover the period April 2018 to April 2019.
Regulations and guidance about the duty of candour process have been issued by the Scottish Government and you can find it here. It has also issued a guidance letter, which you can read here. An online learning module is available now. This explains more about the duty of candour and helps services and their staff understand their obligations. We strongly encourage services and their staff to undertake this module here.
We have included a question in our notification forms, “does this incident trigger the duty of candour?” This allows us to collect data on how the duty is being implemented and help embed awareness.
The first annual duty of candour reports will be due after April 2019 and it is important that services plan ahead. Even if there are no incidents to which the duty applied, a short report will still be required, as it must contain information about staff training on the duty of candour.
For social work services, we will ask local authority chief social work officers to notify us that they have published a duty of candour report after 6 April 2019.
For care services, we will amend future annual returns, to ask services if they have published a duty of candour report.
From April 2019, we may ask to review services’ duty of candour reports or examine them as part of our overall scrutiny of care services.
Our role in developing the reporting and monitoring
The Scottish Government asked the Care Inspectorate to chair a small working group looking at how the reporting should take place, and what kind of monitoring should happen.
The group comprised key representatives from health and social care and was chaired by the Executive Director of Strategy and Improvement at the Care Inspectorate. It concluded its work in February 2017.
It made a series of recommendations and you can read the report here. For regulated services, the group recommended that the Care Inspectorate and Healthcare Improvement Services should try to integrate the reporting and monitoring into existing notification processes, to make it simple for providers.
The group recommended that health boards and social work departments should be free to select the best way to record information, and provided a series of template reports showing how annual reports should be made.
The Scottish Government responded to the report and you can read its response here. For more information on the duty of candour, there is lots of helpful information on the Scottish Government website here.
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
Early learning and childcare profiles
Early learning and childcare profiles, by local authority
We have created early learning and childcare local profiles to assist local authority planning for the expansion of early learning and childcare in Scotland.
These profiles are a valuable source of information about daycare of children services in local authority areas. They include information about: number of services and capacity; funded places; trends in children registered; registered children by age; service quality; sessions and opening times; SIMD and urban/rural classification; staffing and vacancies; population estimates and projections; and an early learning and childcare service list of the area.
The profiles focus on those services that provide early learning and childcare (children and family centres, nurseries and playgroups) while our early learning and childcare statistics publication also provides information about out of school care, holiday playschemes and creches.
We welcome any feedback, queries and ideas for improvement for these profiles; please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Early Learning and Childcare Profiles, as at 31 December 2016
Early Learning and Childcare Profiles, as at 31 December 2017
Early Learning and Childcare Profiles, as at 31 December 2018
Education Scotland
The Care Inspectorate and Education Scotland have recently reviewed their collaborative working approaches for carrying out inspections in the early years and school care accommodation sectors. The previous methodology was developed by our predecessor bodies, the Care Commission and HMIE. It is important to update the methodology to better meet the requirements of the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010.
Our new arrangements for working together will seek to maintain high levels of efficiency and effectiveness and to streamline the paperwork we request from providers.
Changes include joint questionnaires and joint self-assessment and reporting formats. There will be a care inspector as part of the inspection teams for nursery classes in primary schools.
Children and Young People (Scotland) Act: Early Learning and Childcare
Education Scotland and the Care Inspectorate will work together to support the development and expansion of early learning and childcare.
We will continue with our current programmes of both individual and shared inspection and evaluation of services for children aged 3 to school age. In relation to the new entitlement for specified groups of 2 year olds to early learning and childcare, our shared activities will focus on building capacity in partnership with the local authorities and organisations such as the National Day Nurseries Association, Play Scotland and the Scottish Childminding Association (SCMA), as well as providers themselves.
Our collective aim is to assist in ensuring that the increased provision will be of a high quality with the focus on achieving the best possible outcomes for children and that commissioners and providers are committed to delivering flexible choices for parents.
The Care Inspectorate will continue to inspect all daycare and childminding services for children in line with current legislation.
eForms guidance
Before using the eForms system for the first time, we recommend that you clear your browser’s cache and cookies. For instructions on how to do this, click here.
We recommend that you keep your browser versions up to date to ensure your security settings are maintained.
If you are using Internet Explorer, please note that version 10 or lower is no longer supported. You should update your browser if you are using an older version (you may need to update your operating system to do this). Alternatively you can use a different browser, such as Chrome or Firefox.
Please see the video below for more information.
Further information on:
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eForms: Information for providers about extensions
The eForms system is now available for providers. We are sorry for any inconvenience caused.
In order to help providers, we have extended submission dates for annual returns and some providers' self assessments. The table below shows the new deadlines.
| Process/forms | New submission date | Information for providers |
| Annual returns | 29 February 2016 | The final submission date has been extended to reflect the system being unavailable. |
| Self assessment | 18 February 2016 | Those services that were closed over the festive period and were given an extension to the end of January have another two weeks from 4 February. |
| Draft inspection reports and error response forms | 25 February 2016 | If you have been unable to view your draft report and/or submit your error response form you now have an additional fifteen working days from 4 February. |
| Final inspection reports and actions plans | 25 February 2016 |
If you have been unable to view your final report and/or submit your action plan you now have an additional 15 working days from 4 February. If you are waiting for you report to be finalised, we shall do so once the date for the error response form has passed. |
| Notifications | 25 February 2016 |
Please use our eForms to log all notifications that occured whilst the systems were not available including any you have already contacted your inspector about. Any notifications you have already submitted online will not be lost. You will be able to see what you have previously submitted to your account.
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| Any other eForms documents | For any other eForms documents (such as an application to inactive/active or vary your registration), we shall process your forms as quickly as possible. | |
| Scottish Care Home Census | April 2016 - date to be confirmed. | The submission period is not affected. You'll receive a message from us nearer the time to confirm the date of submission |
If you have any concerns please contact the Contact Centre helpline on 0345 600 9527
Enforcements
Enforcement is an essential and powerful element of the Care Inspectorates' core responsibilities and it is central to our aim of protecting service users and bringing about an improvement in the quality of care services.
We have two different types of notices that can be served against care services.
Condition Notices
A condition notice is served when the Care Inspectorate needs to change the conditions of registration of a service in order for it to operate. If a provider wants to change their conditions of registration, they can apply for a variation. An application for variation is not treated as “enforcement”. Read more about variations here.
Improvement Notice
An improvement notice might be served when we have sufficient concerns about a service. The provider must make the required improvements within a given timescale. If not, we may pursue the cancellation of that service. Cancelling a service is rare and we work hard with services to ensure that this is the last resort.
Urgent Proceedings
If we believe that there is a serious and immediate risk to life, health or wellbeing, we can apply to the Sheriff Court for emergency cancellation of a service's registration or apply for changes to their conditions.
Click here to view/download the Enforcement Policy.
Read more in our Requiring care services in Scotland to improve leaflet.
Engagement with children and young people
The Care Inspectorate is committed to purposeful engagement with children and young people, strengthening how we listen to and act upon their views and experiences. We want to put their perspective at the heart of the inspection. Based on our work with our young inspection volunteers, we have developed a range of approaches which enable us to reach out to children and young people and hear about their experiences of services and the differences that these have made to their life chances. See our approach to engagement.
We want to gather information that tells us about impact and outcomes, and how services have improved the well-being of children and young people in need of support and extra help to keep safe.
We recognise that efforts are made across CPPs to listen to the views of children and young people. A meeting between the Care Inspectorate’s inspection lead and the CPP’s co-ordinator at an early stage in the inspection planning process is invaluable in helping to identify individuals and groups of children and young people as well as the key services that support them.
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