The Care Inspectorate has this week published their new Quality Framework for registered childcare services, including childminders, which has been developed after extensive consultation and testing with childminding services and partner organisations across the childcare sector, including SCMA.
The primary purpose of the framework is for services to evaluate their own performance, and from June 2022, it will be used by the Care Inspectorate for inspections and form part of your on-going self-evaluation, to evaluate quality of care, play and learning in your setting.
The Quality Framework provides inspectors with independent assurance about the quality of children’s experiences and outcomes within your childminding setting – and by setting out what they expect to see in high-quality care and learning, it can help support improvement within your childminding setting.
The framework focuses on children’s wellbeing and sets out the elements that will help answer key questions about the impact that your care and learning is making to outcomes for children. There is also a strong emphasis on children’s rights and, in particular, the UNCRC.
This means that from June 2022, inspections from the Care Inspectorate will follow this new Quality Framework, focussing on four key areas:
- Nurturing care and support
- Play and learning
- Quality assurance and improvement
- Staff skills, knowledge and value
The timescales involved enable all service providers, including childminders, to become familiar with the new Quality Framework, and we have been advised that the Care Inspectorate are planning events to help support you with the upcoming changes.
In addition, the new framework is designed to support settings to showcase their strengths and assist with making improvements, where required, and support you in evaluating your own performance in delivering high-quality care and learning for children.
We would encourage you to take some time to read the Quality Framework document and engage with any upcoming information and support events from the Care Inspectorate. This will include a dedicated webinar, aimed specifically at childminders, to share good practice on using self-evaluation within your settings – helping to ensure you are knowledgeable and feel confident about the new Framework and how to approach self-evaluation and inspections in the near future.
READ the Quality Framework from the Care Inspectorate