Nearly all care home inspections are unannounced

Inspectors from the Care Inspectorate are using their power to visit care homes 24 hours a day to check standards in 98 per cent of visits this year.

The figure is up from two years ago, where only 50 per cent of care homes in Scotland inspected were unannounced visits. Annette Bruton, chief executive of the Care Inspectorate, said:

"Virtually every care home now faces unannounced inspections - whether they support children, adults or older people - as do almost all nurseries.

"No system of inspection can guarantee that bad things will never happen to vulnerable people, but unannounced inspections are absolutely essential. They are a key way of testing how well a care service is actually performing. As well as checking policies and procedures, our inspectors observe the quality of care that is being provided at any given time, day or night.

"Last year we increased the number of our inspections, and stepped up their intensity. We check the quality of care being offered, the fabric of the building, the quality of staffing and management and leadership, and grade them on a scale from unsatisfactory to excellent. Every inspection report is published on our website for all to see.

"In the small number of cases where a manager knows that our inspectors are visiting, there must be sound reasons for it.

Last year, the care watchdog completed 1400 inspections for older people, of which 98 per cent were unannounced.

"Some of these figures include multiple inspections of the same place because when a service is not up to scratch we don't just report the fact - we demand improvements and come back time and again to check they have happened. Our job is not to just to inspect care services: it is to help them meet the highest standards.

"This year we are continuing our programme of unannounced inspections, and will target our scrutiny on those care services that cause the most concern. The public rightly demands the highest standards and so do we."