National Care Service Forum 2023: report

Introduction

The National Care Service (NCS)

The Scottish Government is working with people and organisations across the country to improve community health and social care support in Scotland.

To ensure that everyone has access to consistently high-quality social care support across Scotland, whenever they need it, the Scottish Government is designing and developing a National Care Service (NCS).

We are doing this with people who have experience of accessing and delivering community health and social care support and other relevant services.

National Care Service Annual Forum

As part of the ongoing development of the NCS, our second annual National Forum was held on Monday 30 October, 2023 at the Glasgow Science Centre.

The aim of the annual forum was to provide an opportunity for people to come together and talk about the future of community health and social care in Scotland.

This year we also wanted to update people on the progress of the NCS. This included sharing the insights gathered from the regional forums held over the summer, and gathering views on what needs to happen next.

You can find the reports from the regional events by visiting www.gov.scot/ncs.

Lessons learned from the 2022 National Forum

In order to make this year’s annual forum as successful as possible, we took account of the feedback we received following the first annual forum in 2022. We:

• worked hard to make the online experience more interactive
• provided more time for the panel discussions
• ensured accommodation booked for attendees was truly accessible
• published the programme on the Scottish Government website well in advance of the event and in various formats, as well as on our social media channels, and shared it with stakeholders
• provided a mailbox and telephone helpline for any pre-event enquiries
• again covered expenses for accommodation and travel and other support as required
• again provided BSL interpretation and electronic live captions