Scottish Government

ISBN 1 905501 18 8

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Contents

Acknowledgement
Chapter 1: Summary, evaluation and recommendations
Chapter 2: Context
Chapter 3: Key outcomes for people who use services
Chapter 4: Impact on people who use social work services and other stakeholders
Chapter 5: Delivery of key processes
Chapter 6: Operational management
Chapter 7: Strategic leadership
Chapter 8: Capacity for improvement
Appendix 1: Inspection methodology and process
Appendix 2: The Dumfries and Galloway Inspection Team
Appendix 3: Structure of Dumfries and Galloway social work services

The inspection of social work services in Dumfries and Galloway is the first full performance inspection, after three pilot inspections in 2005, which were used to test our methodology and establish a standard of performance from which future evaluations could be made. Each inspection focuses on the approach to continuous improvement of the local authority.

The Social Work Inspection Agency will undertake performance inspections of all of Scotland's local authority social work services between 2005 and 2008.

SWIA has adopted a six-point scale in its inspection of local authority social work services. In this report the inspection team has provided an evaluation in relation to each of the ten areas for evaluation of the performance inspection model ( PIM), found in appendix one. The six-point scale is set out below.

The evaluation scale

A word about tense, terminology and proportion

This inspection report mainly uses the past tense - for example, '…there was a huge effort.' We state the position at the time of the inspection. This does not mean that the stated position is no longer the case. So when we say there was a huge effort (at the time of the inspection), we do not mean that there is no longer a huge effort. If something was happening but is not happening now, we say so.

In the report, we use the following words to describe numbers and proportions: