Members update from ALLIANCE Chief Officer
Read March's member exclusive update from ALLIANCE Chief Officer, Sara Redmond.
Dear members,
I can feel Spring on its way and have been enjoying seeing the snowdrops emerging.
The pre election period is fast approaching and so is the ALLIANCE’s annual conference and annual general meeting, which will take place on March 23. I am looking forward to the day and hoping to see many of you there.
Fair funding
In December our Chair and I met with the First Minister together with colleagues from CCPS (Coalition of Care and Support Providers Scotland). We presented the findings from our member survey outlining the funding and operating challenges you are currently facing. The First Minister listened intently, and we felt it was a good open discussion. Following the meeting we sent a further letter explaining the breadth of organisations that make up the ALLIANCE’s membership and outlining the risks that reductions in the services and support delivered by members pose to the people who rely on them.
We received a letter from the First Minister outlining work they are undertaking to support health and social care. However, there were no specific commitments to the asks we made. Indeed, the Scottish Budget changed the baseline for calculating the funding to go to local authorities to pay the real living wage for social care services. This reduced the available budget for local authorities and effectively meant the pay uplift to contracts in 2026-27 would not have covered the full uplift to the real living wage. This was an issue that CCPS and social care providers campaigned against and has since been overturned by Scottish Government.
There is more that we need to do collectively to ensure Scottish Government understands the fullness of the sector’s contribution to health and social care and we will be continuing to work on this in 2026.
The announcement by the current Scottish Government of a Third Sector Partnership was welcome, although the devil will be in the detail. The Population Health Framework programme board meeting in March will have a focus on the third sector, and the fairer funding pilot is welcome.
Service Renewal Framework
The Health and Social Care Service Renewal Framework (SRF) – published in June 2025 – sets out the Scottish Government’s strategic policy intent for health and social care service reform in Scotland and will drive progress towards our Health and Social Care vision. This was set out by the Cabinet Secretary on 4 June 2024, with the goal as a ‘Scotland where people live longer, healthier and more fulfilling lives.’
It’s a 10-year plan to shift from reactive to preventative care, with more support in communities and smarter use of technology.
The SRF is underpinned by five key principles for renewal:
- Prevention: Prevention across the continuum of care
- People: Care designed around people rather than the ‘system’ or ‘services’
- Community: More care in the community rather than a hospital-focused model
- Population: Population planning, rather than along boundaries
- Digital: Reflecting societal expectations and system needs These principles provide an evidence-based and value-driven foundation from which to plan, make decisions, and deliver change.
The SRF also sets out major areas for change, underpinned by enabling shifts, which will deliver on the intentions behind these principles so that they become a reality. These include:
- Prevention – Enhancing services that prevent disease, enable early detection and effectively manage long-term conditions.
- Person Led – Delivering health and social care that is people-led and ‘Value Based’.
- Integration – Strengthening integration across the system.
- Access – Improving access to services and treatments in the community.
- Hospital Redesign – Redesigning our hospitals as we deliver more care within communities.
- Digital – Delivering services which are accessible through digital technologies, with people and our workforce able to access and make use of the right information.
Work is under way to develop individual Delivery Plans for each of the Major Changes and Enabling Shifts to set a clear medium- and longer-term direction for reform. We believe these will be shareable.
A mapping exercise has been undertaken to identify the actions beyond the 19 in the SRF executive summary and to ensure the programme captures the existing health and social care priorities for improvement and reform. This has identified over 150 actions which are being consolidated into Workstreams under each of the Major Changes and aligned with other elements of the HSC Reform Portfolio.
Some of the actions taken so far include the work to combine NHS Education Scotland and NHS National Services Scotland into NHS Public Service Delivery Scotland. There is work to establish subnational planning arrangements for the Health Boards into East and West. The initial launch of MyCare.scot took place on 3 December in Lanarkshire.
Primary care and community health
One of the major changes is to support a greater shift of healthcare provision into the community and into primary care. The Primary Care Division in Scottish Government are the lead for this at present.
In December we hosted a members’ event to help inform a primary care and community health delivery plan. This work has now evolved to include a draft delivery map, and the team has asked the ALLIANCE for our input in this area.
We will be holding another event on 18 March for member organisations as well as a session for individual members on 17 March. If you are interested in joining these sessions, please email the membership team at membership@alliance-scotland.org.uk
Long term conditions framework
Scottish Government are still scoping out plans to develop a long term conditions framework. The initial timeline was delayed after the ALLIANCE and others shared that it would be impossible to fully develop a considered framework by March. Since then, a meeting was held by Scottish Government last month co-chaired by Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland to engage some stakeholders and support the Scottish Government to consider how best to structure a series of advisory groups to inform the development of the framework.
Over the coming months these advisory groups will develop a set of macro-level recommendations, followed by ‘further recommendations’ by May 2026.
The timescale continues to be a barrier, and we will continue to offer to support ALLIANCE members’ engagement in this process.
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