Parents and carers survey
During the inspection it is important that we hear as much as possible from the children and young people using services. Consequently, we have adapted our methodology to enable the views of children and young people to be prominent. We have also developed a survey specifically to hear feedback from parents and carers.
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Matters of concern arising during the inspection
At any point during an inspection, inspectors may have cause to believe that a child or adult is at risk of harm as a result of abuse or poor practice. In these circumstances, inspectors have a responsibility to report their concerns and ensure that services with a responsibility to investigate and take the necessary actions to protect the child or adult at risk are able to do so.
Addressing matters of concern during a joint inspection
- Each CPP will have identified a lead member of staff that the inspection lead will liaise with when a concern is raised. This will normally be a senior manager in children’s social work.
- The inspection lead will ensure that inspectors, local file readers and associate assessors know what to do when they are significantly concerned about an issue and they will be guided to complete a concern form.
- Concerns will be discussed with the inspection lead who will decide if the concern needs to be brought to the attention of the local lead member of staff in the CPP.
- The local lead member of staff will take action in line with the relevant inter-agency procedures to report all instances where it is believed that a child or adult is at immediate risk of harm, or, may have experienced abuse which has hitherto not been the subject of a satisfactory investigation.
- The referral from the Care Inspectorate will be recorded on the local case management system. They will also be recorded on a record.
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Inspection team - roles and responsibilities
Inspection lead
The inspection lead will be a strategic inspector from the Care Inspectorate. They are responsible for the successful conduct of the joint inspection and as such leads on all aspects and phases of the inspection. Responsibilities include leading the inspection team; ensuring the effective gathering and analysis of complex data and evidence across the range of relevant services; and reaching sound conclusions about how well services work together to ensure good outcomes for children.
The inspection lead plays a key role in setting the tone of the inspection by establishing credibility and confidence of chief officers, community planning partners, senior managers and key staff in the range of services involved throughout the joint inspection.
Depute inspection lead
The depute inspection lead is responsible for supporting the inspection lead in the preparation, planning and management of all phases throughout the joint inspection. The role includes deputising for the inspection lead for aspects of the inspection as directed, as well as assuming responsibility for the conduct and completion of the inspection in the absence, or withdrawal, of the inspection lead due to unforeseen circumstances.
Strategic support officer
The strategic support officer (SSO) project manages each inspection. They work closely with the Care Inspectorate's inspection lead and depute inspection lead in supporting the inspection. They provide a key link for the partnership and will work alongside a co-ordinator identified by the CPP. The SSO co-ordinates a wide range of activities to ensure that the inspection runs efficiently, and they are the first point of contact for the CPP for logistical aspects of the inspection.
Relationship manager
The Care Inspectorate has a regulatory relationship manager linked to each local authority area and they will provide a “profile of performance” about care services operating within the area. This helps to build a picture and contribute to the inspectors analysis of the partnership’s self-evaluation.
Link inspector
A strategic inspector within the Care Inspectorate has a link role with each local authority in Scotland. They provide support and challenge to the local authority social work service and the Child Protection Committee, as well as participating in the Shared Risk Assessment/Local Scrutiny Plan development. As part of the inspection team, their responsibilities include preparing and submitting an analysis of relevant data and intelligence in respect of services in the area. The link inspector also has the key role in subsequently monitoring progress of any action plan resulting from the joint inspection.
Inspection team members
Other inspection team members include:
- Other Care Inspectorate strategic inspectors
- His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland (HMICS) Associate Inspector
- Inspectors from Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) and Education Scotland
- Associate assessors - drawn from a pool of experienced professionals who have been nominated by CPPs and their employer to take part in strategic inspection teams
- Young inspection volunteers aged 18 to 26 who are supported by a voluntary organisation and have relevant experience of care services.
The role of all inspection team members throughout the inspection is to:
- gather, record and analyse evidence across services and from a range of sources including a review of multi-agency practice by reading children’s records;
- interview children, young people, parents and carers sensitively to obtain evidence of their experiences, the impact of the services that they receive, and the outcomes achieved;
- facilitate and record focus groups on key themes or with particular groups of staff; and
- produce clear and concise written reports within the inspection timeline to assist the inspection team to reach conclusions about the quality of services provided.
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Inspection scope
Inspection activity is designed to enable us to include in reports, assurance about the effectiveness of partners’ work in improving outcomes for children and young people at risk of harm.
Sources of intelligence used to determine the scope of the inspection include:
- nationally and locally collated data; reports published by community planning partners such as single outcome agreements (SOA), local outcome improvement plans (LOIP); children’s services plans; NHS Local Delivery Plan; child protection committee business plans; corporate parenting plans; and progress reports.
- engagement with the CPP.
- the self-evaluation and supporting evidence provided by the CPP.
- the results of the staff survey.
- the results of the children and young people’s survey and the parents and carers survey
- findings of previous inspections carried out by the Care Inspectorate and scrutiny partners, including findings from inspections of relevant registered care services.
- intelligence held by the Care Inspectorate such as findings from investigations of complaints.
From early in the inspection footprint, the inspection team review information and evidence to record areas where they judge there to be no significant concerns, areas of uncertainty, or areas of concern. Activities during the inspection aim to answer areas of uncertainty and/or confirm them as either areas of strength to be commended, or areas of concern which require action to improve.
The specific scrutiny activities carried out may vary between areas being inspected. This is to ensure that the inspection is able to answer questions relating to the delivery and effectiveness of services in each area.
However, in all inspections, scrutiny activities involve:
- reading a sample of children’s records;
- meeting with children, young people and families receiving services locally;
- speaking with staff and managers from a range of agencies who deliver services locally; and
- observing key multi-agency processes.
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Inspection questions
Joint inspections of services for children and young people at risk of harm aim to provide assurance about the extent to which services, working together, can demonstrate that:
- Children and young people are safer because risks have been identified early and responded to effectively
- Children and young people’s lives improve with high quality planning and support, ensuring they experience sustained loving and nurturing relationships to keep them safe from further harm
- Children and young people and families are meaningfully and appropriately involved in decisions about their lives. They influence service planning, delivery and improvement
- Collaborative strategic leadership, planning and operational management ensure high standards of service delivery.
Our findings in relation to the four statements, together with our evaluation of Indicator 2.1 (Impact on children and young people) and our assessment of the impact of Covid-19 on the continuation of practice to keep children and young people safe will, in turn, form the basis of the published report. This will include key messages, strengths and areas for development for the partnership.
We will be looking at how well systems are organised to ensure that children and young people can experience continuity in their care and develop lasting relationships. We will also look at how well staff are supported and equipped for their task.
We want to learn how well children and young people understand and have been involved in decision making and plans about their care and support, as well as how well they think professionals work together to promote their well-being.
We will be looking at the extent to which performance in assessment and planning, supported by robust quality assurance and high-quality reflective supervision, is in place to ensure the safety of, and improve outcomes for, children and young people.
The child protection systems review identified the need for a clearer collective understanding of when child protection concerns should give rise to consideration of compulsory measures of care. Our inspections will consider the appropriate use of legal measures to achieve security and stability in the lives of children and young people at risk of harm.
We will continue to assess how well leaders work together and how they can demonstrate the difference that they are making to the lives of children and young people at risk of harm.
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Inspection footprint
Joint inspections of services for children and young people at risk of harm encompass two main phases and take place over 22 weeks from notification to publication of the inspection report. However, the actual time may vary as we do not count school holiday weeks.
Phase One involves submission of a pre-inspection return by the CPP; the issue of a staff survey and a review of children’s and young people’s records. Following this, surveys for children and young people and parents and carers will be issued.
Phase Two involves the submission of a position statement and supporting evidence by the CPP; and a week of engagement activity, including contacts with children and families and focus groups with key staff. Inspectors are usually on site in the area for a total of five days during the second phase.
Over the course of the inspection, inspectors will hold three professional partnership discussions with leaders and managers from the CPP.
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Good practice
The Care Inspectorate has a duty to disseminate good practice to support improved outcomes for people who use social care and social work services across the country.
The over-arching criteria for good practice examples are that they show:
- show creativity and innovation; and
- are clearly resulting in improvements in the well-being of children and young people.
During the course of the inspection, the inspection team may identify areas of good practice which may be reflected in the final inspection report.
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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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Children and young people's survey
During the inspection it is important that we hear as much as possible from the children and young people using services and we have adapted our methodology to enable the views of children and young people to be prominent. We have developed a survey specifically to hear feedback from children and young people aged between 8 - 15 year olds. There is also a separate survey for parents and carers.
We want to hear the views of children and young people as well as their parents and carers about their personal wellbeing and outcomes.
We anticipate that surveys are completed electronically although where this is not possible other means of distribution can be agreed with the inspection lead.
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Records reading
The systematic review of records during the first phase of the inspection provides a window into the quality of operational practice, particularly about processes such as assessment and planning which underpin safe and effective practice for children at risk of harm. Inspectors review children’s records over three consecutive days including those from social work, health, education, police and SCRA.
Building on the successful inclusion of local file readers in the previous joint inspection models, inspectors will continue to work collaboratively with community planning partnerships (CPPs), building capacity and bringing added value to the scrutiny process wherever possible. Usually, six local records readers are included in each inspection. Each local records reader is matched with an inspector for the duration of the file reading activity. This is to provide a higher degree of moderation and discussion to promote learning through this process.
We have developed guidance for CPPs about this. Training for local records readers takes place before the records reading activity commences and can be extended to include other staff from the CPP who have a quality assurance role and would benefit from this input, up to a maximum of 15 people including the six taking part in the subsequent records reading.
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