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The Social Work Inspection Agency wants to apply the same inspection standards to Scottish voluntary organisations as those used to assess local authority performance.

Alexis Jay (pictured), the agency’s chief inspector, told the conference she was keen for voluntary groups to pilot the same system it used to measure the quality of council services.

She said: “I’d be happy to discuss with the sector some system where organisations can volunteer to have aspects of their services scrutinised by this model. There could be huge advantages for them.”

Extending the model could help voluntary providers win more contracts by enabling them to validate the quality of services and identifying and addressing performance weaknesses.

It could also save them substantial amounts of money: currently the sector has to pay generic standards body Quality Scotland to assess its services against European quality standards.