Our strategic inspection teams

Last updated: 15 May 2026

What we do

These are the core functions of the strategic inspection team.

  • Carrying out strategic inspection work.

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

  • 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.

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.