National Care Service: factsheet

Improvements we are making in the Bill

We intend to remove Part 1 of the Bill but retain Parts 2 and 3 of the Bill at Stage 2, subject to Parliament’s agreement. These parts of the Bill cover some of our original NCS proposals and we will still implement these if Parliament agrees to the Scottish Government’s Stage 2 amendments.

Anne’s Law

The right to see and spend time with loved ones is a fundamental human right. It is central to the Anne’s Law provisions in the Bill. Our Bill amendments will set out those rights. This will ensure that residents of adult care homes can always connect with the people who are important to them, unless there are exceptional circumstances.   

Even where there are exceptional circumstances, care homes should always support some people to connect. For example, in end-of-life situations, or where pausing visits would cause serious harm to residents’ health or wellbeing.   

The amendment formally recognises the role of family, friends and others providing care, support or companionship. This was called for by Care Home Relatives Scotland and builds on updates we made to the health and social care standards. 

The amendment sets out that people can choose to identify at least one person as an Essential Care Supporter. 

Information sharing and information standards

It is currently too difficult for people to see and contribute to information held about them. It can also be difficult for staff from multiple organisations to access consistent information about an individual. We will establish a scheme for information sharing, so that public health and social care services can be provided efficiently and effectively.

This is important to improving information sharing across health and social care. In doing so we will ensure that people have access to data and information about them as they move:

• across services
• locations
• from prevention and early intervention to acute and specialist provision

We will also create a provision allowing Scottish Ministers to set consistent information standards across health and social care in Scotland. This will improve the connectivity of our IT systems and data will make sure that the right people can access the right information, at the right time. This includes people receiving social care support.

Rights to breaks for carers

We recognise the huge contribution unpaid carers make to Scotland, support them and protect their wellbeing and caring relationships.

As part of this, the Bill will include a new right to breaks for unpaid carers. This major step is a recommendation of the Independent Review of Adult Social Care.

Ahead of the legislation, we are using funding levers to expand short-break support. The 2025 to 2026 budget includes an additional £5 million to expand low-intensity, preventative voluntary short breaks for carers.

This will bring the total value of the fund to £13 million for 2025/26. This means more carers can access the breaks they need. However, while this will improve access to short breaks for carers, it will not create a right to breaks.

Independent advocacy

We know how crucial independent advocacy is to the human-rights based approach of the NCS. We will consider how we ensure this is available to those who need it.

Procurement

Reviews have highlighted the impact procurement can have on the quality and flexibility of services. They also showed that we can improve consistency of practice.  We can make most of these improvements can without legislative changes.

But the light-touch regime threshold is set in legislation. It determines when specific rules apply to purchasing of certain services including social care services. This is still valuable. Through the Bill we have provided a power to enable the Minister to change this threshold, for health and social care services.  Any future changes must still follow international laws.

Social care is provided by a wide range of organisations including third, independent and public sector bodies.  This is important for flexibility and stability of services. But we recognise the importance of the third sectors like charities, voluntary organisations and social enterprises and have heard how hard it can be to compete for contracts. Through the Bill, we have provided another procurement route for these organisations. This will be another tool public sector bodies can use when procuring community health and social care services. The decision to use this will be a local one. There will still be other procurement routes for independent sector businesses. Services will still be delivered by Public Sector, Independent Sector and third sector organisations.