National Care Service - complaints: findings summary - easy read

Part 1

About the National Care Service

The Scottish Government is working to improve community health 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 (NCS).

The NCS will be designed with people and groups who have experience of accessing and delivering:

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

Introduction

We are also co-designing a complaints service for the NCS.

This will be designed with people having experience of accessing and delivering:

• social care support
• social work services

• community health services

This report shares the findings from our research and co-design that relate to complaints and redress.

Redress means to fix something that has gone wrong. This could include an apology.

In the NCS, we want to make it easier for people to be able to make a complaint if they need to.

We also want the NCS to help people to understand what happens as a result of their complaint.

It will help people who want to make a complaint about:

• social care support
• social work services

• community health services

We looked into how complaints about health and social care are handled now.

About National Care Service Complaints

The Independent Review of Adult Social Care in Scotland report said there should be a NCS.

The report also said we should improve the complaints and redress processes in social care.

The suggestions in the report were:

• when things do not work well for people, they must be able to make a complaint

• there must be a good system in place to deal with complaints and fix issues quickly

Another suggestion was that the NCS should focus on:

• better information and advice for carers
• a better complaints process

In initial work on NCS, people said they would like to have a charter explaining their rights.

The NCS will develop a charter that will tell people about their rights and give them information on what to do if they do not think their rights are being met.

Most people agreed that a service to submit complaints or feedback about social care, social work and community health support could be helpful.

In 2022, the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill was introduced to the Scottish Parliament.

A Bill is a proposed law that the Parliament needs to pass before it can become a law.

Click this link to find the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill.

The Bill gives a plan for setting up the NCS.

It allows the chance to work out the details through co-design.

Co-design means:

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

The Bill says:

• Scottish Ministers will make an NCS complaints service to receive and pass on complaints about NCS services

• Scottish Ministers will have the power to make rules to improve how complaints about the NCS, and wider social care services, are handled

In February 2024, the Scottish Parliament agreed to the general principles of the Bill.

The Bill is now in Stage 2.

This means Members of Scottish Parliament (MSPs) can suggest changes to the Bill and the Scottish Parliament will think about those changes.