Activity update on the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill co-design process

Further details have been shared on the progress of the Scottish Government's co-design activities for the National Care Service.

The Scottish Government is co-designing the proposed National Care Service with people with lived experience and stakeholders. In 2023 co-design has been focussing on the initial themes of:

• Information sharing to improve care support.
• Recognising rights and responsibilities
• Keeping care support local
• Making sure my voice is heard.
• Valuing the workforce

All co-design activity is moving through 3 initial phases of work. These are:

1. Understanding
2. Making sense and coming up with ideas
3. Agreeing

After these three initial phases, proposals that are being taken forward will be taken through two additional stages:

• Drafting regulations/service design – where co-design conclusions are developed into regulations or undergo service design as required.
• Review – where people with lived experience, stakeholder and delivery organisations can review the draft proposals before progressing.

What progress has been made?

Two of the design themes – ‘recognising rights and responsibilities’ and ‘information sharing to improve care support’ have already undertaken initial Understanding phase work. This work has included engaging with 236 people with lived experience and 104 people representing stakeholder organisations. Co-design activities used a mix of online and offline participation and offline events took place in Dundee, Perth, Ayr, Glasgow, Inverness, and Kirkintilloch.

Next Steps

From May onwards there are plans for co-design activity for all five design themes. This activity includes undertaking surveys, interviews, and workshops with people with lived experience and stakeholder organisations across the country as well as online.

These co-design activities will culminate in a series of regional forums.

Regional Forums

The Scottish Government have agreed that regional events would be a good way for people with lived experience, who are not able to attend the National Forum. These regional events will help the Scottish Government to hear from people from a wide range of areas and demographics and will hope to include seldom heard communities who are currently under-represented on the Lived Experience Experts Panel.  

At these events the teams will share information and plans about social care support improvements and NCS development and they will also carry out and link to local co-design activities.

To maximise the reach of these forums, they will be planned with local organisations who are best placed to mobilise their communities and hold events in community venues which are most accessible.

Plans currently are to hold a minimum of nine regional events during the summer in the following areas:

• Forth Valley
• Glasgow
• Tayside
• Dumfries & Galloway
• Argyll & Bute
• Skye
• Highlands
• Shetland
• Moray

Each event will be tailored by the requirements of that region.

The Scottish Government are also proposing to hold five online sessions that will each focus on the five co-design themes.

Recruitment

Participants are being recruited through the Lived Experience Expert Panel (LEEP) and the Stakeholder register. In each case, participants are initially selected by preference of those who have indicated an interest in the design theme in question at point of registration. Then invitations are extended to this group based on the requirements of each project to ensure a breadth and diversity of experience is represented.

Communications and Engagement

A number of videos highlighting the stories of people with lived experience of the community health and social care system have been produced, and have began to be shared on the Scottish Government’s YouTube.: National Care Service: Our Voices – YouTube

The Scottish Government have also created a NCS blog series which aims to share information about developments of the National Care Service and encourage people to participate in various ways. Health and Social Care National Care Service Archives – Health and Social Care (blogs.gov.scot)

There is also a Scottish Government NCS stakeholder newsletter which launched in December 2022. The newsletter will be issued monthly and aims to provide updates on NCS activity and progress. To sign up please visit: NCS Communications and Engagement (list-manage.com)

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