Who we are

All care services must, by law, be registered with us. When we register new services we check that all their information is correct. We check that the premises are suitable and that the care provider and manager are fit to run the service. We also check that the service will be able to look after the health, welfare, needs, choices and dignity of everyone who experiences care at that service.

Inspecting care services

We carry out thousands of inspections each year to check that the quality of care being provided is meeting people’s needs. If it’s not, we can work with services to support them to improve. When we inspect, our inspectors talk to people experiencing care and their carers, staff and managers. We evaluate care services and look at important areas such as how well care is planned. We check that the service supports people’s health and wellbeing. We also look at the quality of the care setting and how well it’s staffed, led and managed.

We assess each aspect on a scale from one to six, where one is unsatisfactory and six is excellent. After every inspection, we publish an inspection report showing our findings. All our inspection reports are public documents for all to see. Every service has a dedicated inspector who monitors and provides support to the service.

Joint and strategic inspections

We also carry out a range of joint inspections across adult, children’s and justice services with other regulators. We focus on how well social work and social care services provided by local authorities are planned and delivered, and look at the outcomes that services achieve for children and adults.

Improving the quality of care in Scotland

A lot of our work focuses on supporting social care and social work in Scotland to help improve outcomes for people who experience care. We contribute towards making sure that everyone, in every community, experiences high-quality social care and social work that is compassionate and tailored to their rights and needs.

We work with others, including health and social care partnerships, local authorities and our partners in health, to support services and the people that they care for.

Complaints

If something isn’t right about the care you see or experience, we encourage you to speak to the care staff and manager in the first instance. They can often help to put things right. You can make a formal complaint using the service’s complaints procedure. All services must have one. But if that hasn’t helped or you felt unable to do this, you can contact us direct – confidentially if required.

If you are not satisfied, you can complain to us:

We need to verify information so that we can deal with your complaint fully. We will not share personal details with the service without your consent.

Volunteers

We believe it is important to listen to the voices of care experienced people to help us do our work better and improve care. People who have personal experience of a care service themselves, or those who have cared for someone who has experienced care, can work with us as a volunteer. Our involvement and equalities charter outlines how we involve people who experience care services and informal carers in our work.

Resources

We are a public body funded by Scottish Government.

Our budget for the year 2025-26 was around £55.7m.

£50.5m was for our core operating costs.

£4m for digital transformation.

£1.2m for short-term grant funded programmes.

We employ almost 700 staff and have offices across the country.

Sustainability

We have a social and environmental responsibility to improve the sustainability of our organisation and continue to adopt and improve our sustainable working practices. The Scottish Government sets ambitious targets to reduce carbon emissions and the Care Inspectorate has a duty under the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 to help achieve these targets. We are committed to doing so by improving our energy efficiency and adopting more sustainable working practices.