Care Inspectorate | TEC Scotland

The Digital Social Care Programmes and Care Inspectorate partner, Nicky Cronin, provides a vital link into improving outcomes for individuals in home or community setting through the application of technology.

Their current focus is on:

PainChek

Key Objectives:

To demonstrate the value that using a pain monitoring App, which uses automated facial analysis supported by artificial intelligence, can have to individuals who are not able to verbalise the extent of their level of pain.
Monitor improvements through the use of the app by staff, quality of life indicators and changes to medicines prescribed and used.
To take learning from our phase 1 test and upscale into phase 2. In phase 2 we will increase the number of services and trial the use of PainChek in a wider range of social care settings.
Support national learning for future developments in pain assessment technology.

Latest update:

We are close to completion of phase 1 and will soon be able to summarise our results and share findings.

The team are currently recruiting services to phase 2 of the project. We have worked closely with the care inspectorate’s scrutiny teams to shortlist 20 services. Based on phase 1 learning the following steps are being built into phase 2:

Early engagement with services, GPs, social work and inspectors
Engagement webinar with participants and on-going in person support
Monthly data review to identify when additional support may be required.

Residents from whole units/homes participating has significantly more chance of app becoming embedded than individuals scattered throughout the homes.
When required in person support from the project team throughout phase 2
https://hub.careinspectorate.com/how-we-support-improvement/improvement-programmes-and-topics/technology-enabled-care/

TEC Good Practice Guide

Now published and available here

Key Objectives:

To create and raise awareness of the good practice guide for digital use in care providers in Scotland
To provide examples of the use of digital to support care and provide individuals with independence within a range of social care groups of providers.
Developed by the Care Inspectorate for use internally in the care inspectorate as an exemplar of good practice and for external partners in order to see good practice in services so that improved digital practice can be realised.

Latest update:

The TEC Good Practice Guidance was pubslished on the 23rd February. We have since delivered a webinar on the 21st March showcasing sector speakers and showcasing the impact of the TEC Good Practice Guidance.

The final guidance was published in early 2023 through the Care Inspectorate communications team and onto their 'Hub' page, and webinars continue to take place to deliver informative and interactive sessions based around the new guidance.

Supporting Digital Technology in Social Care through Scrutiny and Improvement

Key Objectives:

To support the use of digital technology in social care through scrutiny and improvement practice and the care inspectorate. This will be achieved through a number of initiatives which will be reported under this workstream.

Latest update:

Care Inspectorate Annual return analysis

We developed range of digital technology questions for the Care Inspectorate’s annual return request to all registered services. There was a significant response, and a detailed analysis was provided by the Care Inspectorate’s intelligence team. This will inform both Scottish government and the Care Inspectorate about digital maturity, strategic planning, and next steps in terms of improvement support work for the Care Inspectorate. The work is on-going, both to draw out the themes and develop the questions further for next year’s annual return.

Professional Development Award (PDA) in Scrutiny and improvement practice (SCQF 10 for SSSC registration)

This is a mandatory qualification for all inspectors. We are working with PDA delivery team to enhance the digital content of the course. This includes digital for scrutiny activity (virtual inspection elements, digital information exchange etc) and to develop inspector confidence in digital conversations and evaluating care providers use of technology to support outcomes for people.

Improvement Project – Increasing involvement of children and young people in regulated care inspections (using technology)

Aligned to the Care Inspectorate’s Promise workstream 1, the overall aim of this project is to improve how involved and informed children and young people feel in our inspection feedback process. To achieve this, we tested feedback to children and young people post inspection. This involved both face-to-face and video methods of feedback.

The project is entering an exciting new stage. By March 2024, we hope to have developed and implemented a feedback toolkit and procedures, which may be used by all inspectors in the children and young people’s national inspection team. This stage of implementation will begin in December 2023 and involves three inspectors from the Children and Young People (CYP) team, young inspection volunteers, methodology team and our communications team.

Self-evaluation TEC toolkit for care providers.

We are currently writing a draft self -evaluation toolkit for effective use of technology social care. This will accompany the recently published TEC Good practice guidance published March 23. The development of the toolkit will involve both internal and external consultation through the care inspectorate’s participation platform. Updates to follow.