Scottish Care at Home

New Regulator SCSWIS

Social Care and Social Work Improvement Scotland

From 1 April 2011 a new public body will begin operating in Scotland: Social Care and Social Work Improvement Scotland (SCSWIS).  

SCSWIS will be an independent organisation. It will be funded by Scottish Government but operate independently to scrutinise and improve care and social work services for the benefit of the people who use them.

I am contacting you directly because you may be able to help us to inform people who might otherwise be unaware of the new body.  

If you have a website, I wondered if you might be able to post up a news item and link to your site which would link to signpost your visitors to our website, leaflet and poster.

• Link to Information Leaflet
• Link to Poster

Below is web text that explains the background of the new body.  This is also suitable for newsletters.  

We can also send leaflets and posters for you to display in public areas.  If you could help with that please let me know how many of each you would like.

Web Text

A new regulator for Scotland: Social Care and Social Work Improvement Scotland

From 1 April 2011 a new public body will begin operating in Scotland: Social Care and Social Work Improvement Scotland.  This body has been created by the Public Service Reform (Scotland) Act 2010.

Social Care and Social Work Improvement Scotland, or SCSWIS for short, will be an independent organisation with its own Board responsible for its governance. It will be funded by the registration and continuation fees it charges and by Scottish Government. It will operate independently to scrutinise and improve care, social work and child protection services for the benefit of the people who use them.

At SCSWIS, we will work to improve care, social work and child protection in a number of ways. We will:

• provide public assurance and protection of vulnerable individuals and act as a catalyst for improvement
• ensure our scrutiny and improvement activity is informed by a systematic analysis of risk and targeted where it is needed most
• provide information on quality of care so that people who use and choose services and their carers and those responsible for commissioning services can make informed choices
• inspect against the regulations associated with the new Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010, the National Care Standards and other agreed national benchmarks
• organise our scrutiny and improvement activity, including inspections, around risk; targeting poorly performing services
• make more use of unannounced inspection
• implement national centralised registration and complaints functions
• develop our workforce to be more skilled at identifying and analysing risk
• develop new validation processes for self-evaluation
• coordinate joint planning of scrutiny and improvement activity and multi-disciplinary inspections with HIS and other scrutiny bodies.

For the latest information on changeover and how the new body will work, visit www.scswis.com or get in touch with the Care Commission www.carecommission.com Tel: 0845 603 0890 enquiries@carecommission.com

How to get in touch with SCSWIS from 1 April
Website www.scswis.com
Email enquiries@scswis.com
Telephone 0845 600 9527

Further Information for editors

From April 1 2011, two new public bodies will begin operating in Scotland; Social Care and Social Work Improvement Scotland (SCSWIS) and Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS). These bodies have been created by the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010 and will be expected to coordinate and deliver efficient and effective scrutiny of health and social care, social work and child protection.

SCSWIS
SCSWIS will inspect, regulate and support improvement of care and social work and child protection services across Scotland. The Care Commission and the Social Work Inspection Agency (SWIA) will no longer exist and responsibility for the work they did will pass to SCSWIS. The child protection work currently done by HMIE will also pass to SCSWIS.

HIS
HIS will take over the regulation of independent healthcare services, previously carried out by the Care Commission. It will also take over the work of NHS Quality Improvement Scotland (NHS QIS), which will no longer exist.