Strategic Inspector

Post: Strategic Inspector

Location: Flexible

Contract: Permanent or locum

Grade: CS1 £59,595

Responsible to: Service Manager (Strategic Scrutiny)

Join us and make a difference – for you, for everyone

It’s our job to ensure care for everyone, everywhere in Scotland is as good as it can be. If you are as passionate about high-quality care as we are, and you’re experienced in your field, we’d love to hear from you.

About us

As a national scrutiny body that supports improvement. We inspect care services and partnerships across Scotland, report on the quality of care people experience, and support improvements in services to facilitate improvements in outcomes for people.

We inspect care services individually. We also work with other scrutiny bodies to inspect the social care and social work services people are experiencing in local areas.

We champion high-quality care whenever we encounter it across the thousands of inspections, we carry out each year, and we work closely with all care providers to support them to improve all the time. We collaborate with other organisations too, supporting improvement across public services. Our work plays a big role in reducing health and social inequalities between people and communities.

We are looking for talented people to join us in making a difference - specialists who understand how to put people’s needs, rights and choices at the heart of delivering social services – and how to lead improvement too. Our 600 staff work with services across the public, voluntary and private sectors. We have offices across Scotland and many of our staff work from home.

About the role

We are seeking to recruit strategic inspectors to lead and contribute to joint inspections of strategic partnerships and social work services and to undertake a range of other scrutiny and improvement tasks. You will work as part of our existing team, providing assurance and supporting improvement across Scotland.

You will be educated to degree level, hold an acceptable qualification (specified in the person specification) and be an experienced, confident practitioner with a sound understanding of the design and delivery of public services. You will have a positive track record of supporting high quality intervention and delivering improved outcomes for people experiencing care and social work services.

About you

You will be able to demonstrate:

• Significant practice and management experience in social work services (children and young people, adults and older people or justice) or integrated health and care services
• Experience designing and implementing inspection or quality assurance and improvement
• Commitment to, and experience of, the protection of vulnerable people and reduction of social inequalities
• Sound knowledge of current policy and legislation relating to the delivery of health and social care, services for children and young people and/or community justice
• Strong analytical skills with the ability to weigh up complex information to reach fair and well-balanced conclusions
• Excellent communication skills, verbal and written, and able to engage positively and effectively with a wide range of people.

You will need to be a strong team player, able to reflect on your own practice and willing to recognise, value and enable others’ strengths. You must be able to work flexibly to meet inspection programme requirements. A significant amount of travel is required for this post and you must be able to stay away from home, regularly, for up to four nights at a time.

We’re proud to be a progressive, supportive employer – we’re happy to talk about flexible working with you and we’re members of the Disability Confident Scheme, aiming to make the most of the talents disabled people can bring to the workplace.

To apply

For an informal discussion about the post, please contact our recruitment mailbox at and a member of our team will be in contact with you.

All applications should be sent to recruitment@careinspectorate.com by no later than 8.00am on Thursday, 17 October 2019.

Shortlisted candidates will be invited to attend an assessment centre no earlier than 1 November 2019.