National Care Service Forum 2023: follow-up questions and answers - easy read

What does the Verity House Agreement mean?

The Verity House Agreement sets out how the national Scottish Government and local councils can improve services together.

We will follow this approach by setting up a new national framework for the NCS.

A framework is a way of organising things.

The framework will mean under the NCS local councils and health boards will still deliver services. They will also keep staff and assets.

Assets means things they own, like buildings

We can make the changes we want by improving the local organisations that help manage services now. These organisations are called Integration Authorities.

There must be a strong link between local and national decisions.

At national level, there will be a new NCS Board. A board is a group of people who make decisions about an organisation. For example, decisions about the NCS.

The NCS Board will oversee how local plans perform.

We want the NCS Board to have Ministerial powers of intervention. This means it will be able to make changes if it needs to.

We will involve people who have used or delivered services that will be under the NCS. They will help make decisions.

We will give more people on the NCS Board voting rights for making decisions.

We will design the NCS Board details with:

• people with experience of accessing community health, social work and social care support services
• unpaid carers
• care providers
• workforce
• stakeholder organisations