Inspection of services for children and young people

The purpose of this briefing is to provide information for staff taking part in inspection activities during our engagement week.

Who are the inspection team?

We are a joint inspection team made up of inspectors from the Care Inspectorate, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland, Healthcare Improvement Scotland and young inspection volunteers. Young inspection volunteers have lived experience of children’s services.

What is the purpose of the inspection?

Our inspections focus on the quality of services and outcomes for children and young people. In this inspection we are looking specifically at services for children and young people subject to compulsory supervision orders living at home with their parents, over the past two years.

What activities do the inspection team undertake?

In your area, during inspection we:

• Carry out surveys for staff, children and young people and parents

• Review multi-agency records of up to 60 children and young people

• Read and analyse a wide range of written information

• Meet with senior managers

• Visit the area to meet with staff, children, young people and families, which we call ‘engagement week’.

What activities will we undertake during engagement week?

We will carry out a range of activities in order to hear the views and understand the experiences of children, young people, families, staff, managers and leaders. The types of activities include:

• Focus groups: discussions with small groups of multi-agency staff, facilitated by two inspectors, lasting approximately 1.5 hours. Inspectors will ask a range of questions to encourage discussion, usually on particular themes.

• Meetings with children, young people and families: our individual meetings are face to face where possible and we will be as flexible as possible to support the engagement of families. You may have been asked to support and encourage children and their families to attend these meetings. We appreciate this takes time, but we encourage you to support children and families to share their views with us. Written information for families can be found here and a video can be viewed here.

• Network meetings: we follow-up a small sample of records that we reviewed by meeting with staff, parents, and children and young people.

• Visits to services: if services provide support to children and young people subject to compulsory supervision orders living at home with parents, we may visit these services.

What information can you share with us?

Joint inspections are carried out under S.115 of the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010. This gives the inspection team members the legal basis to interview staff, review records and speak with children, young people and their families.

Like all agencies working with children and their families, our work must comply with General Data Protection Regulations. Read our core privacy notice.

• During meetings we may ask staff members for examples of their work, however, we ask that you respect the privacy of individuals. During ‘network’ meetings we will be aware of the children and families you are discussing, but this will remain confidential.

• We never report directly on the individual opinions and experiences of staff, children or families and we never identify individuals in our reports, or when meeting with senior leaders or staff members. We instead collate these views and experiences and consider them alongside other evidence.

• The only time we will disclose information is if we are worried about the safety of an individual or have serious concerns about practice. We will do this by alerting a senior member within the partnership.

What will we do with the information discussed?

Contributions to the inspection are used to help the team analyse and evaluate the quality of services locally. We write a report which is published on our website which includes key strengths and areas for improvement. Our young inspection volunteers also help inspectors to provide feedback to children and young people about the inspection findings.

Ultimately we seek to support partnerships to build on strengths and continue to improve the quality of services.

We would like to thank all staff for taking the time take part in the joint inspection process.

By considering the experiences of children who are subject to compulsory supervision orders and living at home with their parents, we aim to better understand what is helping to improve outcomes for children and young people and what is getting in the way.

Our three key lines of enquiry are:

• Children and young people are well supported to live with their families. This support helps to keep them safe, overcome difficulties and makes a positive difference in their lives.

• The services children and young people receive are well planned and delivered in a way which is compassionate and by staff who put children and young people at the heart of decision-making. People in the workforce ensure that children, young people and parents are meaningfully listened to, heard and included.

• Leaders and managers work well together to create and maintain a joined-up system of care which delivers the right services to each child at the right time. This provides children and young people, their parents and the workforce with help, support and accountability. 

In our inspection report we will consider these three key lines of enquiry. We will evaluate four quality indicators from our quality framework using the six-point scale. These are:

• Quality indicator 2.1: Impact on children and young people

• Quality indicator 5.3: Care planning, managing risk and effective intervention

• Quality indicator 5.4: Involving individual children, young people and families

• Quality indicator 9.2: Leadership of strategy and direction

Children and young people have told us about the importance of being able to experience sincere human contact and enduring relationships.  Our approach therefore looks carefully at how well services and systems are organised so that children and young people can experience continuity in their care and develop and sustain lasting relationships. Our inspections also consider whether legal measures are being used appropriately to achieve security and stability for children.

Staff who are well trained and who feel valued and empowered, are more likely to be able to provide high quality services for children and young people. We therefore explore how well staff are supported to carry out their task. Our joint inspections will look at the services provided for them by health workers (for example school nurses, health visitors and doctors), social workers, police officers and lots of other people who work with them and their families.

We know that partners recognise that assessment and planning are critical to ensure the safety of, and improving outcomes for, children and young people. However, we also know that performance in assessment and planning is not as consistently strong across the country as it needs to be. We will look to see if robust quality assurance and high-quality reflective supervision are in place to support these important processes.

Strong collaborative leadership is essential and challenging in the context of providing high quality public services in an integrated landscape. We consider the effectiveness of leadership and how well leaders can demonstrate what difference they are making to the lives of children and young people.

Our inspections last for a number of months. We collect information about the area before we visit it. This helps us to understand what happens there and what is affecting the way that services are being provided.

How long these inspections will last

Preparation (weeks 1-4)

• Week 1 - notification

• Week 2 - meet coordinator and participation lead

• Week 3 - submission of pre-inspection return

• Week 4 - submission of document return

• Week 4 - arrange and open surveys 

Gather and analyse evidence (weeks 5-10)

• Week 5 - partnership discussion 1

• Weeks 4-8 - children and young people, and parents and carers' surveys

• Weeks 4-7 - staff survey

• Week 6 - inspection team analyse written evidence

• Week 8 - review of childrens records

Onsite activity and final analysis (weeks 11-14)

• Week 11 - partnership discussion 2

• Week 12 - onsite engagement with staff, children, young people and families 

• Week 13 - inspection team final analysis 

Reporting and publication (weeks 15-21)

• Week 15 - partnership discussion 3

• Week 17 - quality and consistency panel

• Week 17 - partnership recieve first draft of report

• Week 20 - partnership receives embargoed report

• Week 21 - report publication and video publication

• After week 21 - post-inspection follow up

During the inspection, a team of inspectors from the Care Inspectorate, Education Scotland, HM Inspectorate of Constabulary Scotland and Health Improvement Scotland will:

• speak with the staff

• speak with children and young people and listen to their views

• speak with parents and carers

• read information about the children and young people.

This gives us the chance to find out if children, young people and their families are getting the help that they need and if services are making a difference to their lives. What individual people tell us during inspection is confidential. Our reports do not include any information about them or their family, or anything that could identify them. However, we do have a duty to pass on information if there are concerns about someone’s safety.

Surveys – we have surveys for children, young people and families and we use and safeguard the data gathered from these in the same way as we do with what you tell us in person. Our approach to participation during inspection reflects the importance we give to hearing from children and young people. We also have a staff survey which also enables us to maximise the feedback we get from those working across services.

After our inspection, we publish a report about what we found for the area. Our inspection reports set out what works well and what could improve. We expect the community planning partnership to take action on any recommendations we make for improvements.