How we inspect

What to expect when we inspect

• The Care Inspectorate focuses on people who use care services, making sure that their needs are met, and they are well cared for, protected and kept safe at all times.

• We inspect every registered childminder in Scotland.

• When we inspect

• we talk to you, the children and their families;

• we look at how well care, play and learning are supported;

• we look at how well you support the children’s health and wellbeing; and

• the quality of the setting, personal planning, staffing, leadership and management.

• We assess the quality of every care service on a scale from one to six, where one is unsatisfactory and six is excellent.

• We publish an inspection report after every inspection, and these show our findings to the public.

Before the visit

• Before coming out to inspection, inspectors will check for any information we already have about the service.

• This will be information from:

• previous inspection, registration and variation reports;

• information from notifications like accidents and incidents,

• the Annual Return which should be submitted every year.

• We use this information to plan support as well, for example if we know that one of your children is about to turn 16, we can advise you on what to do.

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY

The Visit

• We will usually do unannounced inspections, although we may phone you a week or so ahead to check when you will be minding children. This can be a bit scary especially if you haven’t met your inspector before. We all carry photographic identification so don’t be afraid to ask to see it.

• We want to see your service operating as it does on a normal day. The children come first, and we will fit in with your plans. We will watch how you work with the children in your care and speak to them about their day, their likes and dislikes and so on. We will talk to you about the inspection and will be happy to answer any questions you may have.

• We will check that you are complying with the conditions on your Registration Certificate. We will look around the parts of your home you use for childminding, including the garden if you have one. We will not normally look at any room or area you do not use. We will also look at the range of activities available to the children and talk to you about how you meet the needs of the children for play inside as well as opportunities for fresh air, play and exercise outside.

Paperwork

We do need to look at paperwork, but it is not the main focus of the inspection and if time is running short, we will take photographs so that we can look at paperwork later. We might also ask you to send paperwork like policies and procedures in an email. We know that paperwork is a big worry for childminders and we will try to help you to make it manageable so do ask questions and tell us about any worries you have.

We will look at the records you keep. You will be expected to have records for each child of their contact details, attendance, any health issues, their likes and dislikes and daily routines. You must record enough information to enable you to keep the children you care for safe, healthy, nurtured and included. Information on children’s care needs should be updated every six months. Records can be kept on paper or digitally like photographs and apps.

We will ask you about your policies and procedures so we can be sure you know what to do about issues, like child protection. We will ask you questions about your service and your future plans.

You will have lots of opportunities to tell us about your service, and about how you involve children and parents in improving your service and also about any training or learning you have been involved in. This might happen during the visit or later on using a virtual meeting or phone call.

• We will take notes and keep a record of the visit. This is mostly done using a tablet and a phone – sometimes we will take photographs however children will never be included them.

• We will only take photos of paperwork and any areas which we want to show other people, especially if it’s something which is really good. We will let you know why we are taking the photo.

• Towards the end of the inspection, we will talk to you about our findings and, where it is possible, let you know what grades to expect and why.

• We will tell you about what you are doing well as well as any areas for improvement, and requirements we will be making and why.

• If it is not possible to let you have this information straight away, we will arrange a convenient time to meet you, either virtually or be phone to give you this information.

Quality Framework

• Currently we use “A quality framework for daycare of children, childminding and school-aged childcare” to guide the inspection and the conversation.

• We also have areas we must look at, called Core Assurances and these are included in the quality framework.

• The framework is designed to support you in evaluating your own service and we have designed a toolkit to help you with this. You can find this on the Hub

• The indicators we use are decided by the Care Inspectorate and not the inspectors so are the same for everybody.

• You will find it helpful to be aware of what these indicators are.

• We are looking at:

• 1.1 Nurturing care and support

• 1.3 Play and Learning

• 2.2 Children experience high quality facilities

• 3.1 Quality assurance and improvement are led well

• 4.1 Staff skills, knowledge & values

• 4.3 Staff deployment. We look at this if you have assistants.

• inspection is a two way process so, if you are not sure about anything during the inspection, just ask.

• we are here to support and guide you so get in touch if you need to talk about your inspection

After the visit

• We will send you an email to tell you when your draft inspection report is available in the eForm system. This means that you will have a chance to correct any factual mistakes using the error response document in the eForm system.

• If the inspector makes any requirements or identifies areas for improvement, you must also return an action plan setting out what you will do to improve your service.

• After this, the report is made final and published on our website.

• We expect you to share your final inspection report with the parents who use your service.

• If we have made requirements, we will contact you again to talk about your progress

Help and Support

We regularly publish resources to support services to keep up to date with best practice and improve.