National Care Service - Expert Legislative Advisory Group minutes: 2 May 2024

Attendees and apologies

The meeting was attended by:

• Scottish Government staff
• stakeholder organisations
• people with experience of community health, social work and social care services

Items and actions

Welcome and introductions

The Chair welcomed attendees, reminded them of who she is and of the protocols for the meeting.

The Chair noted that this is the second meeting to discuss local reform of the care service and thanked those who contributed last week. She reminded group members of the group’s main function, which is to provide advice on legislative issues focusing on stage 2 amendments of the Bill. Scottish Government officials are keen to hear advice on opportunities and risks, and enhancement or mitigation. As always, we are happy to take written responses.

The Chair noted that an electronic note taker was being used and asked for feedback on the conduct and accessibility of the meeting to allow any improvements to be made.

The Chair noted that the Terms of Reference has been updated with new members and actions from previous meetings. The Chair asked if the group agreed that both actions from last meeting have been undertaken or that there are plans to undertake them. The member who raised the previous action point about legislation indicated that, while they welcomed the updated information on what will be in primary and secondary legislation, what they meant was that it would be useful to see something that laid out the legislative approach to matters that are not covered in the paper but are linked to local reform. A member also noted that a previous action to circulate a list of related working groups and workstreams and an explanation of how they feed into each other and ELAG has not yet been completed.

Action

Scottish Government policy officials will provide a note to ELAG summarising the feedback received from the Local Reform sessions, outlining next steps.

Action

Scottish Government to circulate list of working groups and workstreams that exist around the NCS work and how they feed into each other.

A lived experience member raised concerns that including representation of people with lived experience in secondary legislation is not strong enough and they would rather see it in primary legislation. They noted they have asked for a meeting with Scottish Government. The Chair clarified that lived experience representation is what we want to talk about in detail and noted that she has agreed a meeting with the member and others to discuss this.

The policy lead was invited to introduce the discussion topic. She noted that there would be summary outputs and introduced the topics for discussion – naming convention of the new local bodies and embedding lived experience representation in local structures, including but not limited to the boards.

The Chair noted a comment in the chat that the question on lived experience representation is more important and complex and should have more time on it. She concurred, and asked the breakout groups to consider how they want to use their time, but also noted that people do have views on the naming convention.

Breakout sessions

The policy lead noted that a high-level note will be circulated as soon as possible, including outputs from the discussion.

The members were asked if they had any questions or points of clarification, and the meeting closed when none were forthcoming.