ARC is the record system this home uses. It has a separate view built for inspection: read-only, scoped to this home, and open for as long as the manager sets.

Signing in

Go to /inspection/login on a computer in the home. The page is headed Inspection access: "Enter the access code provided by the home's manager."

Type the code into Access code and select Enter. Codes are twelve characters in three blocks — the alphabet has no I, L, O, 0 or 1, so nothing is ambiguous when it is read aloud.

If the code does not work, ARC says "That code is not valid or has expired. Ask the manager for a new one." Ask the manager to issue another; a lost code cannot be looked up.

You can only read

Every page in this view is a GET request apart from signing in and signing out. There is no create, edit, sign-off or delete anywhere in the surface — not hidden, not permission-gated, simply absent. Nothing you do here can change the home's records or leave a trace in them.

Finding things

The left-hand navigation carries a count beside each destination, so you can see where the evidence is before opening anything:

Overview — the home at a glance, with the items that need attention
Chronology — the home's events in date order, filterable by child and by type of event
Children — every current and former child; open one for their file, a single table of their records
By judgement — the three SCCIF judgements, named in full, each listing the records held beneath it

On a narrow screen the same destinations become three buttons and a Jump to a judgement or child… menu.

Each record opens on a page of its own: daily journals, incidents, safeguarding concerns, risk assessments, physical interventions, Regulation 40 notifications, return home interviews, complaints, plans, education, keywork sessions, wishes and feelings, consents and activities. The home's own records — Regulation 44 visits, the Statement of Purpose and previous inspections — open the same way.

An inspector can also download a month of a child's MAR chart as a PDF.

Daily log entries have no list of their own. A home records dozens a day, so they are read inside the daily journal for the day that carries them.

Some evidence the home holds outside ARC: supervisions, training and DBS records, and Regulation 45 reports. Those are named under the leadership judgement so you know to ask the home for them. That is a statement about this system, not about the home.

What the home has chosen to show you

Before an inspection the home prepares an evidence pack: a period, and a decision about which records from it you see. The header shows the period. If the home has not published a pack, it reads All records held by this home and No period set, and you see everything ARC holds for the home.

The home does not choose freely. ARC sorts each record itself:

Protected records are always in and cannot be taken out — missing episodes, incidents flagged under Regulation 40, safeguarding incidents, allegations against staff and concerns referred on externally
Material records are in unless a manager gives a written reason and a different manager approves leaving them out; until that approval they stay visible to you
Routine records are the home's choice

Where records exist in the period but none were chosen, you are told how many: "[number] [records] recorded in this inspection period; none selected." If the pack was prepared before a type of record was part of this view, it says so and tells you to ask the home.

The pack cannot be swapped while your code is live: the home has to end your access before it can publish another. Records can be added to it during your visit, but anything you can already see needs a written reason to leave.

One home, and a clock

The session sees exactly one home — the one you are in. It cannot reach another home or another organisation.

The header shows Access until with the date and time it ends, and a Read only badge. Access expires on its own, and the manager can end it from their side at any point.

End session in the header ends your access, after asking you to confirm. The code stops working, and the manager will need to give you a new one to come back in.

Safeguarding is not held back

This view deliberately includes safeguarding material that ARC normally restricts to the home's designated safeguarding lead — concerns, allegations against staff, referrals. Those records carry a DSL-private badge so you can see which they are.

No safeguarding concern counts as routine, so an evidence pack cannot quietly leave one out. Allegations against staff and concerns referred on externally are protected; every other concern is material.

The reason is straightforward: the help and protection judgement depends on them, so an inspection view that hid them would be worth less than the paper file it replaced.

What is recorded about your visit

Signing in, signing out, each child's file you open, each record you open, each judgement view and each visit to the chronology are written to an inspection access log, with the time, the IP address and the browser. That log is attached to your session and to the home.

This is by design, and it runs in both directions: it is the same transparency that makes it defensible to show you restricted content in the first place.