Social care - Independent Review of Inspection, Scrutiny and Regulation: recommendation report - executive summary

Theme 3 – how should inspection, scrutiny, and regulation be carried out?

The Review heard consistently that a more streamlined system of inspection, scrutiny, and regulation is needed to reduce duplication, increase consistency, be inclusive of all services, and to support the delivery of high-quality services. Inspection and scrutiny can be the catalyst for improvement and is widely recognised by providers, commissioners and regulators as critical for the delivery of safe, agile and effective community health and social care support services.

The recommendations made under this theme are:

16. It is recommended that inspection, scrutiny, and regulation processes more fully take account of an individual’s experience of service delivery and their overall care journey to understand, follow and evaluate the person’s social care support experience over time and their impacts.

17. It is recommended that clear and accessible information about the agencies and their roles, responsibilities and accountabilities is provided for all those who require social care support services.

18. It is recommended that Scottish Government work with the regulators to clarify roles and responsibilities between organisations to streamline inspection activity, remove repeat inspections by different agencies and to reduce duplication and omission. This should include reviewing how joint inspections are currently carried out, encouraging more partnership working and joint inspections, and greater involvement of people in receipt of social care support in inspection, scrutiny, and regulation.

19. It is recommended that inspectors and regulators, whilst fulfilling their statutory duty to identify shortcomings in improvement, should also place equal weight on identifying good practice, innovation and improvement across the sector.

20. It is recommended that an emphasis on outcomes and continuous improvement becomes a central focus of inspection, scrutiny, and regulation.

21. It is recommended that the Scottish Government updates and clarifies its expectations regarding the National Performance Framework (NPF) in relation to publicly funded delivery bodies, particularly with respect to outcomes for social care support services.

22. It is recommended that there should be a duty on the regulator/inspector to work more closely with the provider on agreeing action plans and timescales for continuous improvement recommendations that are additional to regulatory requirements and improvement notices.

23. It is recommended that Scottish Ministers should review legislation to ensure that regulatory bodies have adequate enforcement powers.

24. It is recommended that a duty to self-report should be reviewed to ensure that self-reporting is inherently linked to continuous improvement, whilst also ensuring the regulatory bodies have appropriate powers to act when issues are identified.

25. It is recommended that there is clear and accessible public information about how to raise a concern and systems of complaints. Those systems of complaints should be easy to use, have accessible detail about routes of escalation with clearly defined outcomes that can include redress for people.

26. It is recommended that the Scottish Government should make arrangements to ensure appropriate oversight of regulatory provision of social care support and consider whether there should be separate arrangements put in place for Scotland, in this respect.