Chief Executive at the Care Inspectorate

Take a look at the role…

Thank you for your interest in the role of Chief Executive at the Care Inspectorate.

The Board of the Care Inspectorate is looking for an exceptional Chief Executive to lead our organisation through the next phase of our change journey and drive us forward to achieve our vision of world-class social care and social work in Scotland, where everyone, in every community, experiences high-quality care, support and learning, tailored to their rights, needs and wishes.

The Care Inspectorate provides public assurance about the quality of social care, social work and early learning services, promotes innovation and drives continuous improvement. We collaborate and take action where experiences and outcomes are not meeting individual needs.

The National Care Service proposed for Scotland will have a significant impact on the delivery of social care and social work services in Scotland. As the National Care Service is debated, developed, and implemented this will have significant implications for our role and function. It presents an opportunity to influence and adapt to this changing environment, and strengthen our role, purpose and ability to support and contribute to the delivery of world-class social care, social work and support in Scotland.

With a workforce of 592 employees across Scotland and a strong national focus, the new Chief Executive must be passionate about the quality of social care and social work services in Scotland and a strong advocate for the organisation across the public sector, with Scottish Government, the public, those who experience care and their families, the media and our external stakeholders. You will be the face of the organisation in Scotland, across the UK and also be responsible for representing the organisation on an international platform to promote our work, share good practice and lead by example.

The Covid-19 pandemic has and continues to cause incredible challenges for many across our society, not least staff working in social care services across Scotland to deliver the best possible care. Many people will experience social care and social work services at some stage in their lives.

The Care Inspectorate is the independent scrutiny and improvement support body for social care and social work services in Scotland.

We work to ensure that services for people who experience care are high quality and tailored to their rights, needs and wishes. We do this through embedding the Scottish Health and Social Care Standards in all that we do alongside a commitment to respecting people’s rights.

Developing the standards and building them into our scrutiny model puts those who experience care and support at the heart of all we do.

We are seeking an experienced values-based leader who is politically astute, with highly developed negotiating, coaching and influencing skills, as well as the ability to constructively challenge the status quo and the flexibility to lead the organisation through a changing environment.

The successful candidate will have vision and focus, and a proven track record of successfully leading in a complex organisation. Such experience will include responsibility for an organisation’s finances and operational performance, and for building strategies to deliver its corporate aims.

In return, this role offers the fulfilment of leading a national organisation that is committed to keeping those who experience care, support and learning opportunities at the centre of everything we do.

Paul Edie – Chair, Care Inspectorate

The Care Inspectorate is the independent scrutiny, assurance and improvement support body for social care and social work in Scotland. We provide public assurance in the quality of care delivered to people by individual services and across local communities.

Our vision is for a world-class social care and social work in Scotland, where every person, in every community, experiences high-quality care and support, tailored to their rights, needs and wishes.

We inspect services, taking an intelligence-led, risk-based approach to scrutiny, assurance and quality improvement support. We support improvement where care is not good enough and take action when we find outcomes are poor. Our expert workforce provides scrutiny and support for improvement to services every day, with information, guidance and ideas for sustainable improvements that lead to high-quality care. We offer a wide range of resources to support services to improve. All care services in Scotland must be registered with us and we investigate complaints about registered care services, with powers to enforce change where needed.

We champion the high-quality care we find during the inspections we carry out each year. Increasingly, we work collaboratively with other organisations and the care sector to share good practice, support and spread improvement and innovation across Scotland.

Our work helps reduce health and social care inequalities across communities. We inspect every registered care service in Scotland and our inspection reports provide public information on the quality of care being provided by each of them. We also inspect the range of social care and social work services, and early learning and childcare services, being provided across community areas by local partnerships, reporting on performance and identifying improvements they need to make.

The evidence and intelligence we gather through our scrutiny and improvement support work shapes and influences local and national policy and practice We are proud to have been involved in creating the national Health and Social Care Standards that help us ensure our work puts people and human rights at the heart of all that we do.

Our values drive all that we do. We always strive to practice and demonstrate these values daily and show compassion in everything that we do.

  • Person-centred – we will put people at the heart of everything we do.
  • Fairness – we will act fairly, be transparent and treat people equally.
  • Respect – we will be respectful in all that we do.
  • Integrity – we will be impartial and act to improve care for the people of Scotland.
  • Efficiency – we will provide the best possible quality and public value from our work.

We inspect individual care services

We support and regulate almost 12,000 services. Higher-risk services are inspected more often. Our inspectors talk to people using the service, staff and managers. We want to make sure that people experience high-quality care, and that care services are making a positive impact on people’s lives, based on their needs, rights and choices.

We give care services grades when we inspect them, and look at key areas like care and support, physical environment, quality of staffing, and quality of management and leadership. Each area of each care service is assessed on a scale from 1 to 6, where 1 in unsatisfactory and 6 is excellent. After every inspection, we publish an inspection report showing our findings, which is helpful if you are using service or thinking of doing so.

We inspect how care is provided across areas

We work with other scrutiny and improvement bodies to look at how local authorities, community planning partnerships and health and social care partnerships are delivering a range of services in their communities across Scotland. These inspections look at how well services are working together to support positive experiences and outcomes for people. This helps partnerships understand what is working well, and what needs to improve.

Supporting improvement and driving up standards

Our job is not just to inspect care, but help the quality improve where needed. This means we work with services and support them, offering advice, guidance and sharing good practice to help care reach the highest standards.

We want everyone to experience high-quality care that meets their individual needs. Scotland’s Health and Social Care Standards describe what people should expect from care. The Standards are what we refer to when we are assessing how well care is performing.

National Care Service

There are developments that the Care Inspectorate will continue to influence, shape and contribute to, such as the implementation of The Promise, and the rollout of the expansion of funded early learning and childcare (ELC).  We will also work with the Scottish Government and partners on delivering the recommendations of the Independent Review of Adult Social Care and the implementation of changes coming forward as part of the National Care Service.

Through our core purpose of providing scrutiny, assurance and quality improvement support we have the opportunity to ensure that we contribute towards world-class care, support and learning opportunities in Scotland, where everyone, in every community, experiences high-quality social care and social work that is compassionate and tailored to their rights, needs and wishes.

More information can be found at www.careinspectorate.com.

As Accountable Officer you will be personally answerable to the Scottish Government for the stewardship of the public funds under your control. Within a tightening financial climate and reducing public sector budgets the Chief Executive is responsible for providing strategic and operational leadership in managing the overall business to ensure that: strategic plans are developed and implemented; results are monitored and reported to the Board; and financial and operational objectives are established, maintained and delivered.

Acting as an outstanding ambassador for the Care Inspectorate you will ensure the organisation’s reputation is protected and enhanced, as appropriate whilst also developing and maintaining effective relationships with a diverse range of external stakeholders and partners. This will ensure Care Inspectorate continues to be viewed as a critical strategic partner that encourages innovative thinking and promotes a holistic approach that delivers a person centred, human-rights based and outcome focussed social care provision for everyone in Scotland.

NB: The Care Inspectorate embraces agile working and whilst our headquarters are in Dundee, the successful candidate would not necessarily need to be based in Dundee full time.

Interested candidates should provide a short cover letter alongside a tailored CV to Douglas Adam at [email protected]

All third party applications will be forwarded to Livingston James.

Recruitment Timetable

Shortlist meeting (Livingston James & Care Inspectorate): TBC
Final Assessment & Interview: TBC

The recruitment of this position is managed by Livingston James