Technical Notes 2024, Issue 133 - Notification of Care Inspectorate Review of Social Work Governance and Assurance in Scotland

1. On 22 July 2024 the Care Inspectorate wrote to East Dunbartonshire HSCP Chief Officer to advise of their intention to undertake a review of social work governance and assurance arrangements in Scotland.

2. The Care Inspectorate review will commence in July 2024 and conclude in December 2024.  The review is being completed nationally, carried out under Section 53 of the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010.

3. The purpose of the review is to consider Social Work governance and assurance arrangements across adults, children’s and justice social work services to develop a national understanding of the strength of these arrangements, which will be reported nationally on completion.

4. As part of the review, each HSCP is to provide a prescribed set of documents that outline key processes, performance reporting, governance arrangements and quality assurance.  A staff survey will be circulated to social work staff within the HSCP and a series of interviews with Social Work leaders and focus groups with other key staff across the partnership will be arranged by the Care Inspectorate.

5. Provision of documentation is to be provided to the Care Inspectorate by 27 August 2024.

6. The online staff survey will open on 19 August 2024 and close on 4 October 2024.  The survey is for all frontline staff delivering social work duties and their first line managers across children’s, adults and justice social work services.  The survey will not include our staff working within registered services such as residential care, care at home and day care services. 

7. Interviews with the Chief Social Work Officer and two other members of the Senior Leadership team will be completed by the Care Inspectorate between late September and early November 2024.

8. Further virtual focus groups involving senior and middle managers will also be undertaken as part of the review and we will be advised accordingly by the Care Inspectorate as to their requirements.

9.  Further briefings to Members will follow as details of the Care Inspectorate’s review outcomes are published.

Appendix:

Care Inspectorate SW Governance & Assurance in Scotland Coordinators Letter 22.07.2024

Dear Sir/ Madam,

Review of social work governance and assurance in Scotland: Information for coordinators

 On the 15th July 2024 we notified local authorities and health and social care partnerships of our intention to undertake a review of social work governance and assurance arrangements. The review commences in July 2024 and will conclude in December 2024. It is being carried out under Section 53 of the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010.

We asked local areas to identify the details of an individual to act as a key point of contact for the review and you have been nominated for this coordinator role. Partnerships were to ensure that the person identified has a strong understanding of social work governance and assurance arrangements across the local authority/HSCP area. More information about the review is contained in the review information document on our webpage which includes a timeline and key dates for the review. This was included in the notification letter.

We thank you in advance for working with us on this review. Please be assured that the review is designed to have minimal impact on local social work services and on local coordinators.

Ask of coordinators

Here are the task in the review which will involve you as the coordinator for your local authority area.

1. . Staff survey: We are carrying out an online staff survey and we need your assistance to carry this out. The survey opens on 19th August 2024 and closes on 4 th October 2024 . The survey is for all frontline staff delivering social work duties on a day-to-day basis and their first line managers across children’s, adults and justice social work services. This should exclude staff providing direct care in registered services, such as residential care, care at home and day care services. We will send you a separate email with more information about the survey and the relevant links to the smart survey. 
2.  Provision of documents: As part of the review, we are gathering and reviewing a range of relevant documents. We would like you to send us a small number of documents by 27th August 2024. The documents that we need are listed in the email you received. Please see appendix 1 for more information about this.
3. Interviews with leaders: We would like to invite the chief social work officer and a maximum of two other members of the senior leadership team to meet with inspectors. See appendix 2 for the suggested agenda for this discussion.
   We will be in touch with you individually from week beginning 19 August to arrange for this virtual meeting to occur between late September and early November 2024.
4. Focus groups: We will be arranging a small number of virtual focus groups between late September and early November 2024 which may involve one or two individual senior or middle managers (e.g. operations managers, service managers) from your area. We will be in contact with you in the near future to advise you of the dates and areas of focus.

I am the inspection lead for the review and I am supported by colleagues from across the strategic inspection teams. I am also supported by Ashley Martin, Strategic Support Officer. If you have any questions or require clarification at this stage, please contact us via email: ciswg@careinspctorate.gov.scot.

Thank you in advance for your assistance in this review and we look forward to meeting with you.

Yours sincerely,

Tim Ward
Inspection Lead

Appendix 1: Provision of documents

As part of the review we are gathering and reviewing a range of relevant local documents. The documents that we would like to see, if available, are:

•  Chief Social Work Officer Report 2022-23
•  Performance report covering key areas of statutory social work
•  A risk register example from public protection, adult, children or justice social work
•  Detailed service structure showing all areas of social work, this may be more than one document. Please add a table showing the professional background of senior management team (for example children’s services, HSCP and so  on). This may say health, social work or education. It would be helpful to see how structures report in to chief executives and to elected members/committees.
• Example of an improvement plan arising from audit or self-evaluation activity.
• Terms of reference for governance, audit and risk committee, clinical care governance committee (or similar)
•  Agenda and minutes for governance and audit committee (or similar) (last three meetings)

Please note that we have already carried out work to access these documents through publicly available sources and through link inspectors (to minimise the ask of local coordinators). Therefore we do not need you to send us this full list. In the email we have sent, we have listed the documents that we have not yet been able to source and we would like you to share with us. If there is a document you do not have, just let us know, we are aware that not every area will have each of these documents.

If you have any difficulties providing the documents or have any questions, please get in touch via the email address below.

Please send documents by 27th August 2024. Please do this via email to: ciswg@careinspctorate.gov.scot. 

Thank you

Appendix 2: Interview with leaders- meeting information and draft agenda

Meeting schedule: This meeting will last for approximately 1 hour and we are flexible as to whether this is a virtual meeting or in-person. We would like this to be in October 2024.

Meeting attendees: Two strategic inspectors will attend the meeting. We would like to meet with the chief social work officer and a maximum of two other members of the senior leadership team. If your local partnership has a principal social worker,
we encourage their attendance at this meeting.

Meeting purpose: The purpose of this meeting is to help us to understand the local social work governance and assurance arrangements across adults, children’s and justice social work services. These discussions will allow us to build a national picture of what is working well and help us to consider key challenges.

Agenda items:

1.  Exploring governance arrangements

• Local social work governance and reporting arrangements and your views on the effectiveness of these arrangements
• Visibility of social work, whether it’s well understood and influential; whether roles are clear, equal and valued within various partnership arrangements.

2. Exploring assurance and oversight arrangements

• Processes to assure senior leaders that statutory social work duties are carried out safely and effectively
• Effectiveness of processes in helping senior leaders identify and respond to areas of high risks for social work service delivery
• Use of risk registers and reporting arrangements to identifying and mitigating risks.

3. Exploring arrangements to enable staff to be supported, accountable and effective

• Core governance and assurance arrangements in place to support staff to do their role well, including support for staff to raise risks and concerns
• Staff supervision arrangements and any quality assurance to assure leaders of the effectiveness of staff supervision
• Training and development opportunities and any quality assurance activities underway to consider the impact of training and development opportunities.

4. Exploring arrangements to enable staff to uphold social work values in practice

• Consider council/ HSCP aims and the extent these align with social work values
• Arrangements to support staff to adhere to code of practice and support to staff to demonstrate social work values in their practice.

5. Examples of positive practice.
6. Consideration of key challenges.
7. AOCB.