INTRODUCTION
BY THE CHIEF SOCIAL WORK INSPECTOR
This is our third annual report and accounts since our launch as an executive agency in April 2005. It reports our performance for the period 1 April 2007 to 31 March 2008. It coincides with the conclusion of our first corporate plan and I am pleased that we have successfully delivered all of the main targets in that plan. The Social Work Inspection Agency ( SWIA) was established in 2005 in response to demands from across the social care sector for an independent, better resourced and more systematic approach to inspection of social work services. We have made substantial progress in meeting those demands and I would like to record my sincere thanks to our staff and stakeholders for their enthusiasm and commitment.
Our second corporate plan will be faithful to the original rationale behind SWIA's launch but we also need to take note of the context driven by the changing public sector landscape - notably the Crerar scrutiny review; the Concordat between COSLA and the Scottish Government and the National Performance Framework. We will reflect this by moving away from cyclical inspection to a more focused and proportionate programme of inspection clearly aimed at supporting improvement and building on the unique evidence produced by our initial round of full performance inspections.
To date, we have delivered performance inspections across 20 councils with the remaining 12 programmed across 2008-09. Our rigorous performance inspection methodology is working well and completion of the full programme of 32 councils will provide important and previously unavailable baseline information on the state of social work services across Scotland. SWIA link inspectors are working closely with councils already inspected to support delivery of their resulting action plans and a programme of follow-up visits is well underway. Encouragingly, the follow-up visits that we have completed have all shown that councils have made significant progress in acting on recommendations contained in our performance inspection reports. We will use this information to make sure that future inspection activity is proportionate.
The four-year programme of inspections of criminal justice social work services which covered all of Scotland's unitary authorities and groupings of authorities - a total of 14 reports - was completed in October 2007 and we published a summary report. The programme concluded that, although there was evidence of good practice, there was a need for more consistency in performance across the range of social work with offenders and particularly high risk offenders. In response to this conclusion, SWIA is working with HM Inspectorate of Prisons and HM Inspectorate of Constabulary to carry out a joint thematic inspection into the effective management of offenders who present a high risk of harm to the public. Future inspection of criminal justice social work services has been incorporated into the performance inspection programme.
Multi-agency inspections have now been completed for learning disability services, substance misuse services, and older people's services (two inspections) across four local authority groupings. Further multi-agency inspections of adult and criminal justice services will be delivered as required and Ministers already have confirmed that there should be a further learning disability services inspection.
A key element of our improvement agenda is the identification, collation, dissemination and promotion of good practice identified in inspections and providing professional advice based on inspection knowledge to policy colleagues. We have been proactive in producing reports and audit tools, participating in meetings, seminars, conferences, and engaging with practitioners, academics and policy makers. We have been instrumental in connecting policy development with current practice. We have redesigned our website to support this, including making available statistical data from performance inspections.
Most recently, in January 2008, we held a very successful stakeholder conference providing feedback and emerging themes from the performance inspections completed to date.
On 29 January, SWIA, the Care Commission and Scottish Social Services Council hosted a conference to discuss messages from regulation and inspection on improving care for older people. On 27 February, in collaboration with Community Care Providers Scotland and the Scottish Government's Changing Lives team, we hosted a conference for voluntary social care organisations introducing a draft self-assessment model of governance for voluntary social care organisations. A final version will be available to voluntary organisations by mid-Summer 2008.
Looking ahead
We remain committed to working closely with our stakeholders to deliver real improvements for people who use services. We will make best use of inspection evaluations to target our future inspection activity and to provide assurance through the lightest possible touch. I anticipate also that our inspections will play an important role in tracking progress towards national outcomes. Our evaluations should be a catalyst to support the raising of standards, the continuous improvement of services and improving people's lives.
People who use services have been at the heart of our inspections, with young people, people with dementia, and carers all participating as lay inspectors. We intend to extend this participation of lay inspectors across the whole range of our inspection activity. We are committed to exploring new opportunities for engagement.
We are working with councils to produce a general guide to self-evaluation of social work services, covering the current range of inspection activities, together with a further range of resources to be used at a more in-depth level focusing on commissioning practice, performance management and effective leadership in the first instance. These will help local authorities to assess how well their social work services are benefiting the people who use them.
As ever, our contribution to improving Scottish social work services depends on working closely with our many partners across all the sectors we work in to provide assurance and drive improvement whilst placing people who use services at the heart of our activities.
Alexis Jay
Chief Social Work Inspector & Chief Executive
9 June 2008