ISBN 978 1 905501 47 2
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Contents
Chapter 1 Summary, evaluation and recommendations
Chapter 2 Context
Chapter 3 Key outcomes for people who use service
Chapter 4 Impact on people who use services and other stakeholders
Chapter 5 Delivery of key processes
Chapter 6 Management
Chapter 7 Leadership
Chapter 8 Capacity for improvement
Appendix 1 Structure of Shetland Islands Council social work services
Appendix 2 Inspection methodology and process
Acknowledgement
We wish to thank those who assisted us during the inspection. We received a very warm welcome from everyone we met in social work services and throughout Shetland. We are grateful to all the people who took the time to complete and return our questionnaires and participate during our fieldwork, and also to the staff at the Montfield office for their assistance and hospitality. In particular, we would like to express our thanks and appreciation to the social work services inspection co-ordinator who provided valuable support and guidance to the team throughout the inspection.
Social Work Inspection Agency
The Social Work Inspection Agency ( SWIA) is undertaking performance inspections of all Scotland's local authority social work services. Each inspection focuses on the approach to continuous improvement of the local authority. SWIA will monitor the implementation of the recommendations made in this report and will undertake a short follow-up inspection one year after the publication of the report.
SWIA uses 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), as set out in appendix 2.
The evaluation scale
Level | Definition | Description |
Level 6 | Excellent | Excellent or outstanding |
Level 5 | Very good | Major strengths |
Level 4 | Good | Important strengths with some areas for improvement |
Level 3 | Adequate | Strengths just outweigh weaknesses |
Level 2 | Weak | Important weaknesses |
Level 1 | Unsatisfactory | Major weaknesses |
This inspection report mainly uses the past tense and we state the position at the time of inspection. This does not mean that the stated position is no longer the case. If something was happening at the time of our inspection, but is not happening now, we say so.
In the report, we use quotations from people only where they illustrate widely held perceptions. They are not the views of just one person. We use the following words to describe numbers and proportions when we quote findings from our surveys or from our file reading exercise:
almost all | over 90% |
most | 75-90% |
majority | 50-74% |
less than half | 15-49% |
few | up to 15% |
Examples of good practice in Shetland are set out throughout the text.