We have recently published our Children’s rights, care experience and corporate parenting plan 2024- 2027.
This high-level plan details our commitments and priority actions to meet our obligations, as corporate parents, to care experienced people. Read more on our website.
Reporting restrictive practices
The previous Provider Update highlighted future changes to the information required when services submit a restraint and restrictive practices notification. The new notification will now go live in eForms from today, 24 September 2024.
The changes reflect:
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the incorporation of the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child into domestic legislation
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what care experienced children and young people told the Care Review about how frightening, painful and embarrassing the use of restraint was for them
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that any actions which restrict the liberty of children and young people are taken transparently and appropriately authorised.
The revised notification will make it easier to evaluate outcomes for children and young people subject to both restraint and, additionally, other restrictive practices. It will now request, for example, the initials and age of the young person subject to the restraint, the ‘trigger’ for the restrictive practice and the name of house/unit where the restrictive practice took place.
Please contact the Eforms helpline (0345 600 9527) should any technical support be required, or your case-holding inspector, or relationship manager, should you require further assistance.
We are aware that the current gap around the reporting of incidents which occur in schools has been a source of concern. Currently, the care setting of residential schools (and other care settings) are required to report incidents of physical restraint, seclusion, and other restrictive practices to us, using our eforms system. Our expectation for all 24-hour services is that we must be notified of all incidents of restriction or restraint that are classed as reportable. This includes those that occur within the service, or outwith the service where staff from the service are responsible for the care and support of a young person from the service. See p.4-5 and p.11 of Records that all registered children and young people's care services must keep and guidance on notification reporting for more detail on this.
We are aware that the residential school community have been eager to implement a similar process for the education settings of their provision, and requests have been made for us to fulfil that role, however under the current legislative framework we have no remit to monitor incidents that have occurred in the education facility of a school. We are hopeful that longer term, this gap will be addressed by the Proposed Restraint and Seclusion (Prevention in Schools) (Scotland) Bill.
Review of quality frameworks for services caring for children and young people
The Care Inspectorate is reviewing our quality frameworks for the following service types:
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secure accommodation services
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mainstream boarding schools and school hostels
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care homes for children and young people and special residential schools.
While our inspectors will continue to use key question 7 when carrying out inspections, we recognise that the full framework documents would benefit from review. This is because the quality frameworks are primarily designed as a self-evaluation tool, and we want to support services to continually evaluate and plan for improvement based on the latest national policy drivers and good practice. This will also help align the full frameworks with the updated key question 7 that we launched in March 2024. If you would like to share your views on the quality frameworks, please complete this short survey before 4 October 2024. The survey also includes the option to provide children and young people’s views and the opportunity to sign up for a possible focus group.
Get confident with being confidential
We have designed new posters for services to display in their settings beside their registration certificate.
When people complain anonymously, it is much harder for us to investigate to help improve things as we can’t verify information. We want to encourage people that they can complain to us confidentially and that their personal details are safe. We have two posters available to download, one for early learning and childcare/children and young people’s services and another for adult and older people’s services. You can download the poster that is most suitable for your service from the links below.
These are also available to download on The Hub.
The above information is from a Care Inspectorate Newsletter Provider update for children and young people services from the Care Inspectorate Tue 24/09/2024