National Care Service: charter of rights and responsibilities - easy reads part 1 and 2

Part 1: About the National Care Service

About the National Care Service

The Scottish Government is working to improve community health, social work and social care support.

We are working with people across Scotland.

We want everyone to have access to high-quality local services across Scotland.

People should get them when they need them.

This is why we are designing a National Care Service.

The National Care Service will be designed with people and groups who have experience of accessing and delivering:

• social care support
• social work services
• community health services

About the National Care Service Charter of Rights and Responsibilities

The Charter of Rights and Responsibilities will help people understand their rights and what to expect from the National Care Service.

The Charter will also tell people how to make a complaint if something goes wrong.

Introduction to the NCS Charter of Rights and Responsibilities co-design

A lot of people have told us they want a National Care Service Charter of Rights and Responsibilities.

We want to make sure the Charter fits what people need. So we have worked with people who will be using the Charter to co-design it.

Co-design means:

• you can share your ideas and experiences with us.
• you work with other people to find out how we can make things better.

This includes:

• people with experience of getting support
• people with experience of giving support
• unpaid carers.

We have also talked with organisations that help people who get support.

This paper explains how we are co-designing the Charter.

How we are co-designing the Charter

We have spoken to over 500 people from all over Scotland so far.

We are co-designing the Charter in 3 stages:

• stage 1: understanding
• stage 2: sense-making
• stage 3: agreeing

Stage 1: Understanding

The understanding stage took place between April and June 2022. We gathered information about:

• what people knew about their rights when getting care support

• how people wanted to use the Charter and how it could help them

• if people had used charters before

• how to make the Charter accessible

Stage 2: Sense-making

The sense-making stage took place between September 2022 and December 2023.

We kept working on the things people told us about in the understanding stage.

We worked with more people with lots of different experiences. And people from groups that are sometimes treated unfairly.

This helped us to make a first version of the draft Charter.

We then did more co-design on the draft Charter.

We wanted to make sure we had included everything that people told us. We used lots of different ways to hear people’s views. Like interviews and workshops.