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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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.
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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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Position statement
The Care Inspectorate’s Quality framework for children and young people in need of care and protection (QIF) is central to the development of the partnership’s joint self-evaluation. Community planning partners should familiarise themselves with the quality framework and the position statement guidance before they begin to develop their joint position statement.
The position statement may be presented in the format that the CPP finds most useful but should be no more than 5,000 words and links to supporting evidence should be clearly marked throughout the document. The use of bullet points may help eliminate the need for overly detailed description.
Using the four inspection statements as noted above as the basis for the position statement, community planning partners should seek to answer three reflective questions:
- How good are we now?
- How do we know?
- What do we plan to do next?
More information can be found in the position statement guidance and the quality framework.
The joint position statement should set out the main themes and learning. It should make sense as a standalone document and be succinct, focused and use evaluative language. Inspectors are keen to know about the impact of the CPP’s work on the safety and wellbeing of children and young people at risk of harm, and the difference that its work is making to their life chances.
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Reporting
The findings from the inspections will be published in a public report. This will address the four inspection statements and provide an evaluation of the quality framework quality indicator 2.1.
Prior to publication, a confidential draft is sent to the chair of the CPP, chief executive of the council, chief executive of the health board, and the Police Scotland divisional commander for the area. In addition to the written report, the young inspection volunteers will provide accessible feedback aimed at children and young people which will be shared with the CPP.
Reports are published on the Care Inspectorate’s website and a press release will be issued on the day of publication.
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Recording
All inspection team members have a professional responsibility to maintain accurate records during inspections and we take our recording responsibilities seriously. We record using agreed tools and templates. We use the evidence gathered to reach conclusions and findings and record our rationale.
We do not record the names and identifying details of children and families unless there are exceptional circumstances, such as where we need to do so to ensure that a concern about the child’s safety or welfare is passed on. We do not record individual staff member details other than by designation.
We keep all written material securely and only share it between inspection team members for the purposes of the inspection. We record, store, share and retain information in line with the Care Inspectorate’s policy.
Please also refer to the Care Inspectorate’s core privacy notice.
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Quality framework
Within the context of significant legislative changes and the subsequent child protection improvement programme and the national care review, the Care Inspectorate was asked by Scottish ministers to review and update its methodology to enable self-evaluation and inspection activity to focus on children in need of care and protection. The quality framework (QIF) reflects that change of focus and will help partnerships undertake self-evaluation activity in order to both clearly understand the impact of services that they provide upon those groups and to identify best practice and areas for development.
The quality framework outlines the Care Inspectorate’s expectation of the quality of service provision for children in need of care and protection across CPPs. The illustrations that are provided draw upon and reflect the Health and Social Care Standards published by the Scottish Government in 2017. The quality framework is arranged under six high-level overarching domains which the Care Inspectorate and other scrutiny bodies have adopted for evaluative purposes and which are based on the EFQM Excellence Model. These are:
- Key outcomes
- Stakeholder’s needs
- Delivery of services
- Management
- Leadership
- Capacity for improvement
Our scrutiny activity will address key questions in relation to these domains by gathering information against a number of quality indicators arranged in 10 areas within the framework with one or more of these being linked to each domain. Addressing these key questions, clearly linked to the overarching domains, helps us to consider and evaluate the approach and results of an organisation, and they are at the core of the revised model of joint inspection.
Quality indicators
Within the framework’s 10 areas, the 22 quality indicators cover the key aspects of the work of CPPs and key strategic planning groups in the delivery of services for children, young people in need of care and protection and their families, as well as a global indicator of the capacity for continued improvement. Each indicator has related illustrations describing what very good and weak practice can look like. These can be used as a gauge to the quality of services. The illustrations build upon those contained within previous self-evaluation guides and reflect a greater emphasis on impact, outcomes and the experiences of children and young people in need of care and protection and their families. These are indicative and not designed to be used as checklists. Alongside each quality indicator are potential sources of evidence which partners may consider to support their findings. Again, these are not intended as a checklist but are there to guide partners in considering the sources which may provide essential evidence or help to indicate gaps. Some of the sources of evidence, such as a policy document, will not by themselves demonstrate impact and this highlights the importance of triangulating evidence sources.
The quality indicators can be viewed as a three-part inter-related model:
- the impacts and outcomes that services have upon the lives of children and young people in need of care and protection;
- the processes that make up the work of services that support them; and
- the individual and collective vision and leadership of those services.
This vision will set out the outcomes that services hope to achieve in relation to improving the safety, health, well-being and life chances of children and young people and should be reflected across the CPP and amongst all partner organisations. Part of self-evaluation, this shared vision, understood and owned by all services, should be the driver to improvement and those undertaking the self-evaluation should be able to see a clear thread connecting vision, strategy, practice and outcomes.
Inspection reports not only address each of the five questions, but also evaluate the following quality indicators:
- 1.1 : improvements in the safety, well-being and life chances of vulnerable children and young people.
- 2.1 : impact on children and young people.
- 2.2 : impact on families
- 9.1 - 9.4 : the domain of leadership
For more information on how we use the quality indicators in relation to the inspection questions, see evaluating quality indicators.
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Quality assurance
Ensuring that findings of joint inspections are robust and supported by a sound evidence base is critical. The Care Inspectorate service manager (strategic scrutiny) is responsible for overseeing the delivery of each inspection and undertakes quality assurance activities at key points during the process of each inspection. These include having regular discussions with the inspection lead and attending key meetings of the joint inspection team and selected professional discussions.
Draft inspection reports are reviewed and approved by the Care Inspectorate’s Quality and Consistency Panel before being sent to the partnership. The Quality and Consistency Panel is chaired by the Chief Inspector, strategic scrutiny and includes representatives from Education Scotland (ES), Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) and His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary Scotland (HMICS). The remit of the panel is to:
- quality assure joint inspection reports including progress reports and agree any amendments to ensure key messages come across clearly and that the report tells a coherent story;
- test out the team’s evaluations to satisfy themselves that these are robust, evidence-based and support the story of the inspection, reflecting the experiences of children and young people, making any necessary adjustments;
- benchmark the inspection findings and evaluations against previous joint inspection reports to achieve consistency; and
- consider the need for a progress review or post-inspection improvement support, including the timing, focus and approach.
Issuing a draft of the report to the CPP prior to publication is a further step in the quality assurance process by providing the opportunity for partners to comment and amend any factual inaccuracies. For more information, including the role of the Quality and Consistency Panel see quality assurance arrangements.
Following the inspection’s conclusion, community planning partners are invited to provide feedback on the inspection process using a standard post-inspection questionnaire. This helps to support the Care Inspectorate and scrutiny partners in our own quality assurance and continuous improvement.
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Pre-inspection return (PIR)
This return provides information needed during the preparation phase of the inspection. It includes contextual information in terms of key personnel and structures in relation to:
- CPP members.
- staff involved in integrated children’s services planning.
To enable us to develop the statistically valid case file sample we request information about children and young people receiving services on an agreed date. This will include all children and young people:
- who have been subject to a child protection investigation that has not led to child protection registration. This includes instances where child protection involvement has ended at the initial referral discussion, investigation or child protection planning meeting (previously known as the initial child protection case conference). This excludes instances where concerns have been reported for children, but these have not led to the commencement of a child protection investigation.
- whose names have been placed on the child protection register.
- involved in vulnerable young person’s processes (or equivalent protective process, varying nationally)
- involved in care and risk management processes (or equivalent process, varying nationally)
The request is sent in the form of an excel spreadsheet to be completed electronically. The return should be made in association with all relevant parties (ie. local authority, health, police and Scottish Children’s Reporter).
The PIR will be sent to the identified Inspection Co-ordinator shortly after the notification with return requested within three weeks.
To comply with DPA 2018 and GDPR, the CPP must ensure that any personal data that they send to the Care Inspectorate is:
- adequate - sufficient to properly fulfil our stated purpose;
- relevant - has a link to that purpose; and
- limited to what is necessary - for example, we do not need personal identifiers.
Any personal material that is sent over and above that which is required for the purposes of the inspection may constitute a data breach by the CPP and may be reportable to the Information Commissioner.
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Partnership discussions
Discussions between community planning partners and members of the joint inspection team take place throughout the course of the inspection. Some of these will be at set intervals, whilst others may be as and when the need arises (see guidance). The purpose and representation at each meeting will be dependent upon the phase of the inspection.
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