The five standards cover health and safety and other requirements including appropriate adult:child ratios, criminal records checks for staff, and properly made and kept policies on complaints, emergencies and confidentiality.
The five priority standards chosen from the list of 14 are: a safe environment; health and well-being; quality of experience, whereby each child can choose from a balanced range of activities; confidence in staff, ensuring each child receives care from staff who have gone through a careful selection procedure; and well-managed service.
Care Commission chief executive Jacquie Roberts was due to take the proposal to prioritise the five standards to the Care Commission board this week. She told Nursery World Scotland, 'What we want to develop over the next six months is guidance based on the experience of staff using the tools that are already available. I think that the guidance will be a digestion of what we have done already, with a little more written explanation of how to be flexible in applying the national care standards.
'The standards are very much outcome-based. It's about making judgements on whether the quality of the service produces a particular outcome. It's very much about professional judgement.'
The Care Commission, which took over regulation of early years and childcare services from local authorities in April, as well as responsibility for adults' and children's residential services, is legally required to inspect all daycare settings once within the next 12 months. This will include local authority provision, which has not previously been inspected.
Ms Roberts added that many care commission officers had years of experience of carrying out inspections. 'We want them to understand that these skills didn't disappear out of the window. It's applying their transferable skills to outcomes rather than inputs. What we still have to do is make sure that for those staff who are finding it more difficult, we are providing the necessary support.'
David Wiseman, the Care Commission's director of operations, said the Commission was also looking at developing a training programme following a review of the first six months and taking on board people's experience of the tools currently available. This would involve bringing in external trainers following a tender process.
Mr Wiseman said letters had gone out over the past few weeks to all the providers on the Care Commission's database, advising them of their responsibilities with regard to seeking criminal records checks from Disclosure Scotland, which started operating on 29 April.
The Commission is registered with Disclosure Scotland to act as a countersignatory for applications for enhanced disclosures from a provider -which could be the directors of a company - and the manager of a service, if that is different. However, it will not carry out that function in relation to staff, and the person in charge of a private day nursery is responsible for either registering with Disclosure Scotland or finding an umbrella body to act as a registered body and countersign the application.
Ms Roberts said, 'The law is very clear that the responsibility for determining whether their staff are fit is that of the employer. Nurseries can get up and running and get the checks done very quickly. It's a matter of choice. Disclosure Scotland ran a large number of seminars and the information has been out there about what the change was going to be.'
She said that providers who have concerns should seek to address them at a local level initially and if it becomes evident that the problem needs tackling at a wider level, they can contact David Wiseman, Compass House, Dundee DD1 4NY.
