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
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.
National Preventive Mechanism
The Care Inspectorate is a member of the National Preventive Mechanism (NPM), a group of organisations designated to monitor the treatment and conditions of those people who have been deprived of their liberty.
The NPM’s Eighth Annual Report was published on 20 February 2018. It gives an overview of members’ work monitoring detention across the UK from 1 April 2016 to 31 March 2017 and the NPM’s joint, thematic work on transitions and pathways between different detention settings.
The NPM was established pursuant to the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OPCAT). OPCAT is an international human rights treaty designed to strengthen the protection of people deprived of their liberty, including requiring each state party to set up a national level body (known as a National Preventive Mechanism) that can support efforts to prevent their ill treatment. The aim of an NPM is to prevent torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment from taking place.
Central to OPCAT is the idea that a system of regular, independent visits to places of detention can serve as an important safeguard against abuses, and prevent torture and ill-treatment in places that by their very nature fall outside the public gaze.
Specific requirements of an NPM
To comply with OPCAT, members of the National Preventive Mechanism, such as the Care Inspectorate, must have certain powers. These include the power to:
- inspect all places of detention
- access all information relating to detainees
- interview detainees in private
- choose where to visit and who to speak to
- make recommendations based on human rights norms to relevant authorities
- make proposals and observations on existing or draft legislation.
The Care Inspectorate has these powers in respect of secure care for children. We also work closely with HM Inspectorate of Prisons in Scotland and support some of their inspections.
They recently published Isolation in Detention guidance. The guidance provides a framework that NPM members will apply when examining the issue and making recommendations, and aims to improve consistency of approach. It allows NPM members to identify and promote good and improved practice.
The UK’s National Preventive Mechanism
The UK ratified OPCAT in 2003, expressing its commitment to prevent torture and ill-treatment in places of detention.
The UK’s National Preventive Mechanism was formally designated in 2009 and is now made up of 21 member organisations whose official functions include monitoring and inspecting places of detention.
Across the UK, different detention settings are visited or inspected by different NPM members. The UK NPM is coordinated by HM Inspectorate of Prisons and decision-making is guided by a steering group, which is made up of representatives from NPM members in the four nations.
Each NPM member has a different mandate, powers and geographical remit, and sets its own priorities for detention monitoring as well as contributing to joint NPM priorities.
The Care Inspectorate is actively involved in the UK NPM work, including involvement in three of its four sub-groups:
- Mental Health Network
- Children and Young People’s sub-group
- Scottish sub-group.
Scotland
The Scottish members of NPM are:
- Care Inspectorate
- Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland
- Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons for Scotland
- Independent Custody Visitors Scotland
- Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland
- Scottish Human Rights Commission
The Scottish sub-group coordinates NPM activities in Scotland, provides support to NPM members, raises the profile of the work of the NPM and improves liaison with the Scottish Government. It is chaired by the Scottish member of the Steering Group, currently the Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland.
Link inspectors and relationship managers
The Care Inspectorate provides a designated link team for local authorities and strategic partnerships. This is because there are multiple services of different types and a need for regular planned contact to discuss emerging issues across the breadth of their work. Link teams consist of a strategic inspector, who is responsible for scrutiny carried out at authority or strategic partnership level; a relationship manager for adult care services and complaints about care services; and a relationship manager for children’s care services and registration.
Relationship managers also provide a designated point of contact for larger providers who operate multiple services.
Managers responsible for services for children also link to each of the six regional collaboratives that have now been established across the country.
Named strategic link inspectors and relationship managers can be found here.
Find information on the link inspector role for council and partnership staff here.
You can get information about the link inspector for a particular local authority area by e-mailing the strategic support team at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
eForms guidance
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Continuing care for young people
We have been supporting the Staying Put agenda since 2013 and our role as corporate parents under the Children and Young people (Scotland) Act 2014 includes supporting young people moving from care to adulthood and independence.
We have updated our rules for adult placement services, with changes to fees and combined service status. These changes support young people to remain in their family placement and support providers.
Where a fostering service and an adult placement service operate as one service solely in order to support young people who have been cared for in the family on a fostering basis and who now wish to remain with the same family on a continuing care basis, this will be treated as one service, for the purposes of fees. The level for application and continuation fee will be set at the fostering agency service level. (‘Solely in order to support young people who have been cared for in the family on a fostering basis’ means that the adult placement service does not provide throughcare or aftercare.)
This supports the legislation which states that the accommodation and service should be the same for the young person as they move from being a looked after child to continuing care. On this basis, we are able to treat the services as one. This will mean one fee and one inspection, with a single report published under both categories on our website.
The updated guidance for care services, which includes the policy statement and guidance for staff is available here.
Health and Social Care Standards
On 1 April 2018, Scotland's Health and Social Care Standards came into effect, replacing the National Care Standards. The Care Inspectorate is required, by law, to consider the Health and Social Care Standards when making decisions during our inspections and other scrutiny and improvement work.
We encourage services to refer to these when planning and delivering care.
Over time, the Care Inspectorate is testing and evaluating different ways to carry out its inspections of care services against the new Standards, starting with care homes for older people in summer 2018.
As part of implementing the new Health and Social Care Standards, the Care Inspectorate reviewed the adult to child ratios in early learning and childcare (ELC) settings and issued guidance. This reflects the ratios that existed under the previous National Care Standards, with some additional advice included within the guidance. The guidance will be reviewed in May 2019.
Care Inspectorate report on Health and Social Care Standards implementation
Registration requirements for residential services and care workers for children and young people as they move into adulthood
Joint statement by the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) and the Care Inspectorate.
We’ve had some questions about the registration requirements for workers and services providing continuing care for young people over the age of 16 and under 26 years following the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act, Part 11 Continuing Care. We have considered the issue and decided not to change anything.
The Continuing Care legislation supports continuing care for young people beyond the age of 16 and into young adulthood and this may mean for some residential childcare services they are not only caring for children and young people but also for young adults.
The introduction of Continuing Care has raised questions about how staff and services should be registered with the SSSC and the Care Inspectorate, given that young people will move from childhood to adulthood, while being supported by the same workers and services.
The agreed approach is that there will be no registration changes to either the services registered by the Care Inspectorate or the individual workers registered with SSSC in respect of residential services. So, care homes for children and young people and school care accommodation services will continue to be registered with the Care Inspectorate as residential childcare services. Those working in these settings will also continue to be registered on the parts of the SSSC Register for childcare and residential school care so there will not be any changes to their registration.
Both the SSSC and the Care Inspectorate will expect services and staff providing care and support to young people under Continuing Care to have the skills and knowledge and the services to develop policies to reflect the specific needs of the group for which they are providing care and support.
This approach ensures that the appropriate degree of robust regulation is maintained without placing any extra requirement on workers or services, and supports the development of innovative services for young people to get the best support into their adult life. Legislative arrangements for the registration of foster care agencies and adult placement agencies are separate to this and the Care Inspectorate will issue guidance shortly on this point.
Why your annual returns are so important
Why your annual returns are so important
Every year in January and February, we ask care service providers to complete an annual return. It asks for a great deal of information about your service and the people who use it. It is important to know why you are asked for this information, and what we do with it.
First and foremost, the information you provide in the annual return helps us understand your service. This means inspectors are able to plan and prepare for effective inspections that are focused appropriately.
Not only is the annual return important for planning and focusing inspections, but the information you also give provides a national picture, which can help the us and other partner organisations in a number of ways.
This year's annual returns are now closed. We would like to thank everyone who submitted their annual return to us by the deadline, Sunday 17 March 2024. The information you have provided will help us plan, inform and carry out our inspections and improvement work.
Even inactive services must submit an annual return.
If a service was registered on or after 1 October 2023, it should try to complete an annual return this year. Although it is not mandatory for these services, any information supplied will be used by the Care Inspectorate and Scottish Government. The information entered this year will automatically appear in the December 2024 annual return and only information that has changed will need to be entered.
Benchmarks and comparisons for inspectors
Inspectors can compare a service they are looking at with national averages to identify potential issues. For example, if the inspector is preparing to inspect a service with higher staff turnover than average, when they inspect, the inspector might look at the impact this could have had on the quality of care and outcomes for people using that service.
Publishing statistics
We also publish statistical reports of some of the annual returns data. We also use the annual return data to inform many of our other publications such as:
- Early learning and childcare statistics 2022
- Staff vacancies in care services 2022
- Fostering and adoption statistical bulletin 2022-23
National policy makers (the Scottish Government) can use these summaries and publications to shape and evaluate national policies and providers can see how their service compares with other services.
Supporting improvement
The intelligence we gather through annual returns helps us target our improvement activity and support within social care. It is a great source of baseline data across a variety of health and wellbeing indicators which we use to identify, drive and track improvement, for example infection control, nutrition and the recruitment and retention of staff. The data also helps us to identify trends and topics by both geographical area or service type, so that we can see where best to focus our improvement support work, for example, improvement workshops or new resources and guidance for care services across the sector.
Reducing duplication and sharing information
We also share information with other public bodies to reduce duplication and the costs of data collection for both the taxpayer and the people providing data. For example, anonymised staffing information is shared with the Scottish Social Services Council, so they can develop intelligence about the workforce without having to collect additional data from care services.
If you need help accessing the annual return, you can call our contact centre on 0345 600 9527 or read our frequently asked questions.
Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently asked questions from the briefing sessions to community justice strategic groups to the Care Inspectorate.
| Questions/Points raised | Response |
| Will the model use a 6 or 4-point evaluation scale? | From on-going discussion, we recognised that a 4-point scale might simplify the model and allow for different language but overall, it was felt a 6-point scale would be more helpful in being able to evaluate and see improvement over time. Using improvement language was viewed as being beneficial. |
| As different partnerships are at different stages in development, there was some reservation about capacity to undertake this work and what the expectations were to undertake self-evaluation. | A second phase of the project has been proposed which would focus on building capacity and confidence in partnerships in undertaking meaningful self-evaluation. Partners thought this was required and as well as support locally, there may be benefits for specific support for some partners on a national basis. The OPI Framework does not specify requirements specifically about undertaking self-evaluation. However, embarking on this work will be externally valuable for partnerships in helping strive for continuous improvement and excellence and establishing a strong sense of performance and key priority areas for action. It will also enable partners to identify key strengths. When Community Justice Scotland comes into being, they may wish to offer further views on this. |
| We sent the initial correspondence for the briefing to chairs of Community Planning Partnerships; this has not always resulted in it being passed on. | We took this approach at the end of March 2016 as we recognised strategic partnerships were at different stages in development and CPP chairs were the one constant. We then followed this up by ensuring we copied all transitions leads in to subsequent correspondence about the briefings and this proved more successful. Subsequent dialogue with local areas has resulted in the decision that we will make all chairs of strategic groups the main contact point with the transition leads copied in to all communication. This should make communication flow easier and more consistent. |
| Partners felt strongly that the language should have an improvement tone. | We agree and will endeavour to ensure the model reflects this. |
| Partners had some reservations about expectations of performance against the quality indicators within the self-evaluation model. This was based on the transition stage and the timing required to embed community justice and how this may reflect performance evaluations. |
We understand there are reservations and there are a couple of elements to consider.
|
| Are you speaking to other groups as well as statutory partners? | Yes, we have an extensive approach to engagement and involvement, which will be happening during summer 2016. This will involve a staff survey, service user focus groups and stakeholder focus groups/meetings. |
| Some partners were slightly apprehensive that the staff survey would ask questions about community justice that may still be new or unknown to many staff and were unsure how this would be interpreted and used. | The staff survey is for us to develop the self-evaluation model only. This will be to ensure that a wide range of staff have an opportunity to give their views and influence what the self-evaluation model looks like. The survey is confidential and we will not use it for any other purpose |
| Will partners be able to use the survey questions for their own use? | There is no reason why partners can’t use the content of the Care Inspectorate survey with their staff locally to help gather views and opinions about community justice. They may want to consider amending some or all of the questions to meet local needs |
| Has there been any research done in developing the model? | The proposed model is based on the EFQM framework which is widely known and used and highly regarded across a very wide range of public and private sector organisations. Frameworks based on EFQM have been used to inform scrutiny models in Scotland for many years. In developing this model we are also drawing on existing research, policy and strategy including ‘Reducing reoffending in Scotland’ and ‘Commission on Women Offenders’. |
| Whilst a self-evaluation model is helpful the demand on time was highlighted in respect of evidence. Is there any way to reduce this? | We will consider this when developing the model and plan to include some tips about approaches to gathering evidence. In all of the models we have developed, we encourage partners to use evidence they need to gather anyway, either for the purposes of routine reporting or for ongoing service improvement, rather than undertaking self-evaluation for its own sake. |
| Some partners were slightly concerned about the plans for future inspection of community justice and them being over scrutinised. | The OPI Framework states the intentions for any future inspection of community justice. The Care Inspectorate recognises the need for any scrutiny work to be proportionate, risk-based, targeted and firmly directed at supporting improvement in outcomes for people. |