Joint inspections of services for children and young people

Published: 13 April 2022

Our approach

In 2017, Scottish Ministers asked us to work with scrutiny partners to take a more focused look at children and young people in need of care and protection. Our joint inspections therefore take account of their experiences and outcomes by looking at the services provided for them by health visitors, school nurses, teachers, doctors, social workers, police officers and lots of other people who work with them and their families.

Children and young people have told us about the importance of being able to experience sincere human contact and enduring relationships. They want to be able to build trust through consistent relationships with adults and they want to be supported to maintain contact with those people who are most important in their lives. Our approach therefore looks carefully at how well services and systems are organised so that they can experience continuity in their care and develop and sustain lasting relationships.

We believe that 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 and we will look to see if robust quality assurance and high quality reflective supervision are in place.

Our inspections also consider whether legal measures are being used appropriately to achieve security and stability for vulnerable children. Inspections include a focus on the role played by those working in adult services to protect children and young people and support sustained positive change for them and their families.

Strong collaborative leadership is essential within the challenging context of providing high quality public services in an integrated landscape. We consider the effectiveness of collaborative leadership, including leadership of the child protection committee and its relationship with chief officers. We look at how well leaders can demonstrate what difference they are collectively making to the lives of children in need of protection and those for whom they are corporate parents. We also identify any barriers that affect continued improved performance.

We started the current round of joint inspections of services for children in need of care and protection in August 2018 and will continue to review and revise the approach over the course of these inspections. Following the suspension of joint inspections in 2020 due to Covid 19, the current round has resumed with a focus on children at risk of harm.

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 and other scrutiny partners:

  • 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.

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.

Getting involved

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.

The Promise 

The Care Inspectorate is #Keeping The Promise of the independent care review. We are working across six workstreams internally and externally to influence and support application of the Promise,

Our strategic scrutiny children and young people team is committed to ensuring that our scrutiny and improvement activity is focused on the experiences of children and the impact of services on their lives. 

Inspection volunteers with care experience are key members if our local scrutiny teams. We will amplify the voice of the child in what we do, how we do it and how we report on it. 

More information

The Guide provides information for community planning partnerships (CPP) about the process for the joint inspection of services for children and young people in need of care and protection. This includes services for children under the age of 18 years, or young people up to 26 years if they have been previously looked after. It should be read in conjunction with the quality framework for children and young people in need of care and protection (QIF) for self-evaluation of services.

Find out more:

Downloads: 3184

Inspections overview

Published: 13 April 2022

Inspection types

Our specific inspection focus and programme at any one time is agreed with the Scottish Government and published in the Care Inspectorate’s Scrutiny, Assurance and Improvement Plan. We take a number of different approaches to inspection, designed to meet different scrutiny objectives. These include, but are not limited to:

Inspections and joint Inspections: inspections of individual local authorities or partnerships in relation to key priority areas. Local authorities are identified for inspection based on a combination of risk assessment and rotation of scrutiny activity.

Progress reviews: return visits to a local authority or partnership to check progress following a previous inspection and set of recommendations. Progress reviews are usually (but not always) carried out where the original inspection identified significant areas for improvement.

Thematic reviews/inspections: inspections carried out in a limited number of local authority or partnership areas to explore a particular area of policy or practice that is of national interest. These reviews may or may not evaluate the performance of individual authorities or partnerships but are primarily designed to explore the national picture relating to a given theme and make national recommendations.

Supported self-evaluations: we are always keen to support and encourage self-evaluation. We may at times work proactively with identified local authorities and partnerships to support and validate their self-evaluation of particular areas of activity.

Inquiries: this approach uses an abbreviated approach to explore a particular theme or issue across the country. It is usually designed as a discrete piece of work, carried out over a relatively short time to produce a quick report that provides insight into the key issues relating to the theme.


Inspection teams

Our inspection teams have an inspection lead with responsibility for effectively delivering and concluding the individual inspection. The lead is supported by a deputy lead and a team of inspectors drawn from the Care Inspectorate and relevant partner scrutiny bodies. Our inspections may be supported by associate assessors and people with lived experience (inspection volunteers). The administration and organisation of inspection activities is managed by a team of strategic support officers.

The size of an inspection team will be determined by the scope, methodology and planned length of the inspection. Sometimes, additional resources may be allocated for specific parts of the inspection. However, most inspections will have a core team of between six and 10 members.

How resources are deployed across the different activities of the inspection, and the timing of activities, is captured on a plan that we call the inspection footprint.


Inspection methodology

For each set of inspections, we develop a quality framework (QIF). The quality framework outlines what we expect the quality of the service provided to be. The frameworks we use in our strategic inspection work are based on the EFQM (European Foundation for Quality Management) excellence model, widely used by organisations for managing change and improving performance. The Health and Social Care Standards are woven throughout the quality indicators.

Overall, the QIF provides a model to support inspection. We examine:

  • performance and the outcomes that services achieve for the children and adults who use them
  • the processes that support service delivery
  • the vision, leadership, management and planning of services.

The quality frameworks are also available to local authorities & partnerships for them to use for self-evaluation purposes.


 Inspection activities

The activities carried out by inspection teams to gather information can differ across inspections. However, there are some activities which have been proven to consistently provide good information and are therefore used regularly as part of inspections. These include:

Information and communication

The local authority or partnership can expect to receive full information about the inspection.

Most inspections provide a written guidance document of some sort, explaining the various stages and activities of the inspection, along with timescales.

In most inspections, we ask the local authority or partnership to nominate a local co-ordinator to manage and co-ordinate the various activities for them.

Throughout the course of the inspection, there are pre-planned meetings between key members of the inspection team and the local authority or partnership. These may be called professional or partnership discussions. Their key functions are: for the inspection team to feedback on findings so far; for the local authority or partnership to reflect on those findings; for the parties to discuss arrangements and plans for the next phase of the inspection.

Self-evaluation

It is a priority for the Care Inspectorate to support local authorities and partnerships to evaluate their own progress. Most of our inspections ask the local authority or partnership to provide a position statement and supporting evidence at the beginning of the inspection to help inform the inspection team’s understanding and formulate lines of enquiry.

Talking to children and adults who use services

Understanding the experience of people who use social work and social care services is fundamental to inspection, and we use a range of methods to gather the views of both people and unpaid carers. These are likely to include surveys, interviews, events, focus groups, and a range of activities developed to support specific inspections.

Reviewing records

Reading the records of children and adults who use services (also known as file reading) is a rich source of evidence for the inspection teams and is a part of many inspections. It provides understanding of how processes work and gives a picture of how staff interact with people using services.

Support networks

As well as reading records, many inspections include further examination of the care and support journeys experienced by children and adults by meeting with the staff and other significant people who have been part of that journey. This means that inspectors are able to further explore questions that have arisen from reading case records.

Staff surveys

Many inspections include surveys issued to staff. The inspection team often requests the help of the local authority or partnership in distributing the survey and encouraging staff to respond. The arrangements for issuing the survey, and which staff should receive it, will be discussed with the inspection co-ordinator by the inspection lead and strategic support officer.

Interviews and focus groups with key stakeholders

Most inspections involve focus groups or interviews with key stakeholders, including staff, managers, senior leaders, representatives of other statutory and third sector organisations. Often this takes place towards the end of an inspection as it gives the inspection team a good opportunity to discuss themes and issues that have emerged during other inspection activities.


Inspection reports

Inspection teams use regular team meetings to identify and explore themes that emerge from inspection activities. We make sure that potential findings are triangulated and corroborated through a range of activities before accepting them.

Inspection reports for each strand of inspection activity are tailored to the requirements of that inspection, so there are differences between the reports produced by each strategic inspection team. There will also be differences in the reports produced by each team when they are working on different inspection themes.

However, in general, strategic inspection reports can be expected to contain:

  • a summary of key findings and/or strengths and areas for improvement
  • an analysis of the inspection findings based on the relevant quality framework
  • some form of evaluation of the local authority or partnership’s performance – which may or may not have grades attached
  • recommendations for action and/or improvement.

Quality Assurance

We aim to achieve a high quality for all our work and want it to have maximum value for all our stakeholders and help to improve the experience of people who use services. To help us achieve this, each inspection programme has a range of quality assurance arrangements:

Each programme has arrangements for review of the inspection approach and methodology which take account of the learning from each inspection while balancing the need for consistency. A key source of learning is from post inspection questionnaires and feedback from inspection leads and team members. All strategic scrutiny teams are represented on a forum to discuss potential improvements to inspection methodology from experiences across the different workstreams and promote consistency wherever possible. When reading the records of people who use services during inspection, a proportion of the sample is double read to ensure consistency of evaluations and we provide training for all record readers.

At the reporting stage of our inspections, inspection leads present their inspection team’s findings and draft report to a ‘quality and consistency’ panel with representation from each partner scrutiny body for discussion and comment. Reports are then issued to the area inspected for an accuracy check before final editing and publication.


Information governance

Our approach to processing personal data is set out in full in our organisational privacy notice.


Covid-19

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on social work and social care services across the country. Because of this, most of our strategic inspection work was paused between March 2020 and spring 2021. Since then, strategic inspections have recommenced with some adjustments to reflect the ongoing risks posed by covid-19 and the pressure on local authority and partnership services.

We continue to be responsive to the trends of the pandemic as we plan for and deliver inspection activities. We have also incorporated learning from the pandemic period in relation to our use of technology, and expect to be using a blend of onsite and distance approaches to carry out inspections moving forward.

Downloads: 2154

About us

Published: 13 April 2022

How we are organised

We work in four teams: adults, children, justice and protection.

Each team is led by a service manager and we report through two chief inspectors to the Executive Director of Scrutiny and Assurance.

We are supported by a team of strategic support officers who provide support and co-ordination to all our scrutiny activities.

What we do

These are the core functions of the strategic inspection team.

  1. Carrying out strategic inspection work.
  2. Quality assurance functions – monitoring the completion and quality of:
  • Learning reviews (significant case reviews) in relation to children and adults.
  • Serious incident reviews (SIRs) in relation to people on community payback orders, drug treatment and testing orders and people supervised on release from prison.
  • Investigations into the deaths of looked after children.

       3. Providing support to local authorities and partnerships through our link inspector role.

Who we work with

We know that outcomes for children and adults are affected by many factors.

Different services and organisations are involved in providing care and support to vulnerable children and adults and in most cases, social work services are planned and delivered in collaboration with partners.

We also understand that children and adults are all different, with a wide range of life circumstances and experiences.

For this reason, we do not carry out our scrutiny work in isolation but in partnership with children, adults and other organisations. This helps us to be confident that we are taking all relevant factors into account in our scrutiny work.

Inspection volunteers and people with lived experience

Wherever possible, we involve people with lived experience of using services, or of caring for someone who does, in our scrutiny work. We know that this keeps us grounded and often makes it easier for children and adults to share their experiences with us.

The Care Inspectorate has an involvement team that recruits and supports volunteers to work on inspections across our organisation, including strategic inspections. There is a specific team to support young people with experience of care services, between the ages of 18 and 26.

If you have lived experience of social work and social care services, or care for someone who does, and would like to know more about becoming involved in strategic inspections, please email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Associate assessors

Associate assessors are professionals from statutory and third sector organisations who work at a strategic level and have significant practice or management experience in services for children, adults or justice. They work as part of an inspection team for one inspection.

We believe that including associate assessors brings current practice perspectives to our strategic inspections. They can help ensure we are partnership-orientated and contribute to our understanding of the contemporary picture of service planning and delivery. At the same time, this involvement provides an ideal opportunity to help build capacity for joint self-evaluation and improvement in local partnerships.

Please check our frequently asked questions for more information. 

We are not currently recruiting associate assessors. However, if you are interested in becoming an associate assessor, please check our website which we will update when we are next recruiting. 

Our scrutiny partners

Many of the functions of planning, delivering and monitoring services for children and young people and adults and older people are carried out by more than one agency or organisation. For example, through community justice partnerships, children’s services partnerships and health and social care partnerships. So, we often collaborate with these other scrutiny bodies.

Downloads: 20012

Temporary changes to variations during Covid-19

Published: 07 April 2022

Variation changes for care homes and care at home extended to April 2023

Social care continues to face challenges as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, and we continue to support the care sector by adapting what we do, when needed.

To support services to provide support to a wider group of people, there will continue to be no requirement for providers to submit a variation for any care service type where:

  • a care home for older people is caring for youngeradults or vice versa
  • care at home services care for clients with different careneeds
  • there is a change of operationalhours.

This will continue until April 2023.

In these circumstances, there is no requirement to submit a variation form. Instead, you should simply confirm in writing through eForms, using the notification ‘Changes to service delivery’.

Within the notification, you should note what the change is and confirm the service can meet people’s care and welfare needs.

The notification will not trigger an inspection but may trigger contact from the inspector to discuss the changes you have put in place.

For care homes that are supporting people on an interim basis until care at home is available in their area, there is no requirement to notify the Care Inspectorate.  We will get this information from the oversight teams of homes being used in local areas.  

Downloads: 2487

Counter Fraud, Bribery and Corruption

Published: 24 March 2022

Counter Fraud, Bribery and Corruption

The Care Inspectorate will:

  • take all reasonable steps to prevent fraud and corruption
  • ensure we have processes in place to detect fraud and corruption wherever possible
  • investigate fraud and corruption where it is detected or reported
  • pursue appropriate formal action against those involved in fraudulent or corrupt activities

We will take action where fraud, bribery or corruption has been found to have been committed in accordance with our Formal Action Policy.

What to do if you suspect fraud, bribery or corruption

If you are an employee of the Care Inspectorate please follow our internal procedures for reporting concerns.

If you are not an employee of the Care Inspectorate and you believe that there is fraudulent activity taking place, please report this using the details below or you may wish to report your concerns directly to the police.

You can contact the Care Inspectorate directly:

Jackie Mackenzie
Executive Director Corporate and Customer Services
(Fraud Champion)
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Kenny Dick
Head of Finance and Corporate Governance
(Fraud Liasion Officer)
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Or you can write to Jackie or Kenny at the address below:

Care Inspectorate
Compass House
11 Riverside drive
Dundee
DD1 4NY

You can if you prefer, report your concerns to Audit Scotland.

Further detail on the Care Inspectorate’s counter fraud, bribery and corruption approach can be found here.

Our position statement on Modern Slavery

What is Modern Slavery?

We recognise that workers recruited from overseas are a hugely valuable and important part of Scotland’s social care workforce.

Modern slavery is complex; but simply put, it describes a situation where someone is made to do something, and another person gains from this. Modern slavery is about being exploited and completely controlled by someone else, without being able to leave or belief that you cannot leave through threats by person in control. It includes
human trafficking, slavery, servitude and forced compulsory labour.

Modern slavery is the deception or coercion of a person for the purpose of exploitation.

Modern slavery can be present in any social care setting and victims could be either staff working in a service or people who are using a service.

Our strategic aim

We will constructively work with partners to end modern day slavery in Scotland’s social care system.

Our regulatory response

Our purpose is to ensure registered care services provide people with safe, highquality care and to encourage services to improve.

We will be alert to potential cases of modern slavery and to listen sensitively and compassionately when people raise issues with us. We will respond in the following ways:

  • If we receive or discover information that may indicate modern slavery, we will identify and record this threat. We will do this even if the person contacting us does not refer to it as modern slavery.
  • We will refer identified and potential victims through our established safeguarding referral routes.
  • We will monitor registration applications to check for warning si-gns of potential exploitation of skilled workers from overseas.
  • We will seek out early indication that sponsor licenses are being exploited by working closely with Home Office and other partners.
  • We will not hesitate to take action including proportionate regulatory and enforcement action where modern slavery and unethical recruitment practises pose a potential risk of harm.
  • We will work with other organisations to prevent, disrupt and reduce the likelihood of modern slavery in social care.
  • We will monitor the modern slavery situation by submitting reports and updates to SMG and ET quarterly or yearly.
  • To support our work, we will develop staff awareness/training and procedures.
Downloads: 5661

Safe staffing improvement programme

Published: 11 March 2022

The Health and Care (Staffing) (Scotland) Act 2019 (not yet enacted) was passed in 2019. The Care Inspectorate has been commissioned by the Scottish Government to lead on a national quality improvement programme to support care services in preparation for the enactment of the legislation.

Our vision

Working in collaboration with people who experience care, relatives, representation groups and other key stakeholders, our vision of the programme is to: 

‘Ensure that in care services in Scotland there are the right people, in the right place, with the right skills at the right time working to ensure people experience the best health and care outcomes.’ 

We regularly publish programme updates and resources on The Hub. 

To find out more information about the programme or you would like to get involved email us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Downloads: 11340

Bairns’ Hoose (Barnahus)

Published: 15 February 2022

Bairns’ Hoose, based on an Icelandic model ‘Barnahus’, will bring together services in a ‘four rooms’ approach with child protection, health, justice and recovery services all made available in one setting.  Bairns’ Hoose aims to ensure that every child victim or witness has consistent and holistic support, access to specialist services and receives ongoing therapeutic care from services coordinated under one roof. 

The overall vision of a Bairns’ Hoose (Barnahus) in Scotland is that:

All children in Scotland who have been victims or witnesses to abuse or violence, as well as children under the age of criminal responsibility whose behaviour has caused significant harm or abuse, will have access to trauma informed recovery, support and justice.

The key values through which this vision will be achieved are that:

  • we are child centered, trauma informed and respect the rights and wellbeing of the child at all times
  • we provide consistent and holistic support, which enables children to have their voices heard, access specialist services and recover from their experiences
  • we aim to prevent children being re-traumatised and to improve the experience of the criminal justice process for children and families, and
  • we demonstrate connectedness and national leadership to uphold children’s rights to protection, support, participation and recovery.

In 2019, the Scottish Government commissioned Healthcare Improvement Scotland and the Care Inspectorate to jointly develop standards which will provide a blueprint for a Scottish Barnahus (Bairns’ Hoose).  Also in 2019, a Standards Development Group with representatives from across social work, police, health, justice and children’s voluntary organisations began developing the standards. In March 2020 Healthcare Improvement Scotland and the Care Inspectorate paused the development of the standards in order to reduce undue strain across the system and prioritise resources to support the national response to Covid-19. A refreshed Standards Development Group recommenced work on the Bairns’ Hoose standards in January 2022. 

The final standards are now available to download. We have also developed a version of the standards for children and young people. The standards will help to support a consistent national implementation of the Bairns’ Hoose model.

Update on Barnahus July 2023

For further information regarding the project, see other reports published to date:

Downloads: 10659

Serious Incident Reviews

Published: 09 December 2021

Serious Incident Reviews

The Care Inspectorate assumed responsibility for the oversight of learning from serious incident reviews when it was established in 2011.  The function is underpinned by the Care Inspectorate’s statutory duties under the Public Service Reform (Scotland) Act 2010.  The national guidance for serious incident reviews was developed in partnership with the Scottish Government and Social Work Scotland.   The guidance outlines what is expected of local authorities when a serious incident comes to their attention.

The reporting of serious incidents currently pertains to people who have received a final disposal from court following conviction.  This includes people made subject to the various requirements of a community payback order or a drug treatment and testing order.  It also relates to everyone released from custody subject to statutory social work supervision.  Guidance on the management and delivery of these orders and licences is contained within a variety of national outcomes and standards - Scottish Government collection of justice social work guidance.

When a serious incident occurs the local authority should notify the Care Inspectorate within five working days. The Care Inspectorate provides a quality assurance role in Serious Incident Reviews, by looking at how reviews have been conducted and whether these have been carried out in a robust and meaningful way. The Serious Incident Review guidance with appendixes to submit a notification and review can be found here.

If there are any queries in the meantime please contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Please submit the relevant forms/reports through secure email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The notification and review templates can be found here:

The main contact for this work is:

Mike Hendry, Strategic Inspector

Mobile 07388 709834

 

Downloads: 9867

Learning reviews, Initial Case Reviews (ICRS) & Significant Case Reviews (SCRS) – Adults

Published: 09 December 2021

Initial Case Reviews and Significant Case Reviews

National Guidance for Adult Protection Committees Undertaking Learning Reviews was published on 26 May 2022. This sets out that Adult Protection Committees will inform the Care Inspectorate of the decision to proceed with a learning review, or the reasons for not doing so. On completion of a learning review, an anonymised copy of the review report should be sent to us, and a notification of completion submitted.

There will be reviews ongoing that pre-date 26 May 2022. As such, there will be an overlap in submission of learning reviews and of Initial and Signficant Case Reviews which commenced on or after 5 November 2019, and before 26 May 2022.

For the foreseeable future we will accept all reviews, regardless of their structure.

The relevant online notification system for learning reviews, ICRs and SCRs should be used for all submissions. The forms have in built prompts and guidance to support completion.

Please note online submissions require to be completed in one sitting – they cannot be saved when partially completed and then returned to. There is work ongoing to develop this system.

Learning Reviews

For all situations considered under the learning review guidance, a decision notification form should be completed. This electronic notification form is to be completed at the point when a decision has been made to conduct a learning review, or to detail the reasons for not doing so.

A word version of the notification form has been provided here. This could be used to develop the submission, and then be copied into the online version.

Learning review decision notifications should be submitted here: learning review decision notification.

On conclusion of the learning review, an outcome notification form should be completed within seven days of ratification of the outcome of the learning review by the Chief Officers Group.

A word version of the learning outcome notification form has been provided here. This could be used to develop the responses, and then be copied into the online version.

The learning review outcome notification should be submitted here: learning review outcome notification.

Following completion of the learning review outcome notification, an anonymised copy of the learning review report should be sent via secure email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

ICR and SCR

A word version of the ICR notification has been provided here. This could be used to develop the responses, and then be copied into the online version.

Adult Protection Committees should note the word version is to support the development of the submission. The submission should however be returned through the online tool.

Adult Protection Committees are required to submit the full ICR report to the Care Inspectorate along with the completed ‘Form B’ (ICR notification) within seven days of ratification of the outcome of the ICR by the Chief Officers Group.

The ICR notification should be submitted here: ICR notification.

The Care Inspectorate, on behalf of Scottish Government, acts as a central collation point for all Significant Case Reviews completed across Scotland at the point at which they are concluded. Further to agreeing the Final Report, in accordance with the steps detailed in The Guidance (2019), Adult Protection Committees should timeously agree a dissemination approach, including submission to the Care Inspectorate.

A word version of the SCR notification has been provided here. This could be used to develop the responses, and then be copied into the online version.

SCR notifications should be submitted here: SCR Reporting Form.

Adult Protection Committees can request to receive a pdf version of the information they submit via the online submission mechanism.

The Care Inspectorate is the central repository for all ICRs and SCRs as a way of supporting learning from these reviews to be shared and implemented more widely. As such, it is important that all reviews that are similar in purpose though not labelled as an ICR, SCR are also submitted.

Following completion of the ICR or SCR, an anonymised copy of the ICR and SCR report as applicable should be sent to us via secure email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The main contact for this work is:

Caroline Doherty, Strategic Inspector

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Downloads: 9165

Learning reviews (children and young people)

Published: 09 December 2021

Learning reviews (children and young people)

The Care Inspectorate, on behalf of the Scottish Government, acts as a central collation point for all learning reviews carried out by Child Protection Committees (CPCs) in Scotland. 

The Care Inspectorate is responsible for reviewing the effectiveness of the processes for each learning review and for providing feedback to individual Chief Officer Groups and CPCs.

All learning reviews reports will be shared with the Care Inspectorate.  The National Guidance for Child Protection Committees for Undertaking Learning Reviews published in September 2021, clearly sets out that CPCs will inform the Care Inspectorate of their decision on whether to carry out a learning Review.  On the completion of a learning review, a copy of the full report should be sent to us.

Notifications

CPCs are required to notify the Care Inspectorate of their decision to proceed or not to proceed to a learning review using the Care Inspectorate’s eform system. To do so, the CPC needs to have a user account to log into the system.

Submission of Learning Review Reports

Please submit the full Learning review Report through our secure email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The main contact for this work is:

Maureen Wylie, Strategic Inspector

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Mobile: 07717 423154

Other information

Downloads: 10363

Professional