Health and Social Care

Designing the National Care Service – let’s get started!

September 22, 2022 by Fiona McAra No Comments | Category National Care Service

This week we were very excited to announce the first big opportunity to get involved in designing the National Care Service (NCS) – the launch of our Lived Experience panel for adults with experience of social care in Scotland. Alongside this we have also opened a stakeholder register to ensure that stakeholders have the opportunity to engage across the themes important to them.

Social care will touch on all of our lives at some point. You may need to use its services, have family or friends who do, you may be a carer, or you may work in social care. We want everyone in Scotland to get the social care support they deserve and for the good work taking place in parts of the country to be shared across the system.

Co-designing the National Care Service

Listening to and working with those with lived experience is so important to make sure that the National Care Service delivers the changes to social care that people have asked us for. That is why we will have lots of ways for you to get involved and help design the NCS.

When we talk about co-design, it means we will work in partnership with the people who use and deliver health and social care services, and the organisations which represent them.

We want to make sure that people with lived experience help us understand how things are for them just now. We want to work with them to imagine the kinds of changes we need to make and we want them to help us decide how to make those changes. We believe this is the best way to develop a future NCS which will work for everyone.

We’re initially looking for adults with experience of needing or delivering social care support in Scotland to help us with this vital piece of work.

Why is co-design important?

Luke Jeavons is from the Office of the Chief Designer in the Scottish Government and explains why it is so important we develop the National Care Service together:

“Co-designing the National Care Service is a really important part of creating the future of social care in Scotland. Those with lived experience have a huge amount of understanding and knowledge of what they need to better support them. Many also have lots of ideas about the kinds of changes we should make. By working together, we can find strong, sustainable solutions.

“We learned a lot about how important lived experience is when we developed Scotland’s new Social Security system.

“I am hoping we can build on what we did for social security and shape the National Care Service in partnership with those who use and work in community health and social care.

“This is the first of many opportunities for people to get involved in designing the National Care Service and we will share details on further opportunities in the months to come.”

How can you help?

There are a couple of ways adults with experience of getting or delivering social care support, including carers, can get involved:

1. Lived Experience Experts Panel: This panel will be made up of people who have real experience of using or providing social care support in Scotland. Your expertise will help shape the future NCS and make sure we’re working with the right people, in the right way.
2. Stakeholder Register: We are building this stakeholder register so we can understand which organisations want to take part in future co-design activities. We have already been working with lots of organisations on the development of the National Care Service up to now, and we want to hear from both existing partners and new ones.

We will be expanding our co-design work in the future and there is no deadline to sign up to be involved in designing the National Care Service. If you are not in a place to help just now, there are many more opportunities to influence this work in the months and years to come.

If you don’t want to join the panel we will also be working with other organisations and reaching out again to people, including targeting some specific groups – for example children, young people and families, care experienced people, and young carers.

More information on both can be found on gov.scot, including information on the first set of topics we’ll be exploring, and how to sign up. This co-design process will evolve over time, and we’ll look at further topics in the future.

Working together and sharing experiences are key to getting change right, and we need to work with as wide a range of people as possible.

If you can help us, please get in touch – we look forward to working with you

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