National Care Service - information sharing to improve care support: regional forums - findings summary

Next steps

What’s next for Information sharing to improve care support

The insights from the information sharing sessions will be used to further develop the understanding of what the Care Record needs to do and inform potential policy changes required to make improvements to information sharing.

The findings will also be used to inform the creation of an example Care Record that can be tested with those who will use it.

This work will continue to be co-designed and tested with the people who access and the people who deliver community health and social care services.

The insights we gathered in these sessions also highlighted differences between those delivering care and those receiving care in terms of what information is important to them. We will look at this in more detail with people delivering care support to understand:

• what information is priority for them (by profession or role) to help them carry out their work
• what information should potentially not be shared with the person in receipt of care
• approaches to how best to provide information

We also found that there are issues and concerns with information sharing between professionals in terms of:

• access to information
• knowledge of information security and rights
• lack of support and training

We will also discuss this in more detail with those delivering care support.

People have also told us that they expect to see some care planning information in their Care Record, and that the Care Record can play a role in enabling person-centred care and support. Further co-design work with the workforce will help us explore the links between the Care Record, the care assessment, and the care plan.

What’s next for the National Care Service

The Scottish Government remains committed to delivering a National Care Service to improve quality, fairness and consistency of provision that meets individuals’ needs. We are also working to make improvements to the social care system now.

What we have learned during the summer events will inform these early improvements, as well as the future structures and policies of the NCS, including the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill.

The Bill is currently in Committee stage in the Scottish Parliament. In January 2024, MSPs will take their first vote on the general principle of the Bill. This is called Stage 1.

Over the next 18 months we will continue to co-design with people who have experience of accessing and delivering social care support to design the National Care Service.

We will be doing additional work with people from groups we know are currently underrepresented in our work so far.

In the meantime, we will continue to drive forward improvements across the social care sector, including improving terms and conditions for our valued workforce - making it an attractive profession and bringing even more talent into the sector.