About

How to use this site

Finding a service, reading its grades, and getting in touch.

1. Find services

Use the search box on the home page to look by the name of a service or provider, a town or a postcode. You can also start from a type of service, such as care homes, care at home, housing support, nurseries or childminders.

Then narrow the results. You can filter by council area, provider, lowest grade, average grade and how recently the service was inspected, and sort by, for example, most recently inspected or highest average grade. Some listings appear first because the provider pays for a plan: those are always labelled Featured or Premium. A label tells you the provider has added information, not that the service is better.

2. Read a service page

Each page shows what the Care Inspectorate publishes about the service: its type, where it is, who the registered provider is, its latest grades and the date they were given, how it compares with similar services, and a link to the official record and inspection reports. If the provider has claimed the page, they may also add a description, vacancies and fees.

3. What the grades mean

The Care Inspectorate grades services from 1 to 6 on a set of areas called key questions. They cover things like how well people are supported, leadership, staffing, the setting and care planning, and for services for children, care, play and learning. Which areas apply depends on the type of service. Each grade means:

Grades are never combined in a way that hides the detail: you can see each key question, and the lowest and highest grade a service received. Where we show an average, it is simply the mean of the key question grades and is there to help you compare, not to replace the detail.

4. Check how old the grades are

A grade describes a service on the day it was inspected. It can be months or years old, and a service can change in that time. The date appears beside the grades. A recent grade tells you more than an old one, and a service with no grade has not been graded yet, which is common for newly registered services. For the latest position, follow the link to the official Care Inspectorate record on each page.

5. Compare

Each service page shows whether its grades are above, in line with or below similar services in the same council area and across Scotland. The Insights page shows the same picture for a whole council area or provider, and the complaints page shows complaint counts the Care Inspectorate publishes. Counts can look very different for large and small organisations, so treat them as a prompt to ask questions, not as a verdict.

Insights also has a wider picture for each council area: how full care homes are, how many adults are waiting in hospital to leave, how many older people live there now and are expected to in ten years, and how many care services report staff vacancies. These are public statistics shown for context, not a judgement of any one service.

If you work in care, the care tenders page lists contracts that councils and health boards have advertised, with closing dates and links to the official notices.

6. Get in touch

Use the form on the service page, or the phone number shown. Your message goes to the service, and you can reply to it directly. It is worth asking about anything that matters to you: vacancies and fees, how care is planned, how staff are recruited and supported, and how the service handles concerns. Please do not put medical details in a first message.

7. See it for yourself

No website can replace a visit. If you can, visit, speak to staff and to people who use the service, and read the latest inspection report. This site is a starting point for your own research, not a recommendation, and it is not care advice.

Something unclear? See Help and FAQ, or contact us.

Also: About us · How to use this site · About the data · Help and FAQ · Contact us