National Care Service - national systems of social care in Nordic and Scandinavian countries: learning and evidence review

1. Introduction

The Scottish Government announced its intention to establish a National Care Service for Scotland in its 2021-22 Programme for Government. The National Care Service will seek to build on the recommendations of the Independent Review of Adult Social Care in Scotland to create a social care system that is rights-based, person-centred and addresses the challenges in the social care system identified both before and during the pandemic. The Scottish Government issued a consultation on the proposed National Care Service in August 2021. The consultation set out a wide range of suggested approaches for the cultural and system changes required to refocus the social care system to one that delivers consistent and fair access to care and support services across the country and improves outcomes for people. In December 2021, the Scottish Government asked Public Health Scotland to undertake a rapid scoping review of approaches to adult social care delivery and potentially transferable learning for Scotland (taking account of country and system characteristics that will influence comparability such as health care structures, governance and funding).

1.1. Aim and objectives

The aim of this report is to review research evidence on learning from selected countries' models of social care, with consideration to the range of themes covered in the National Care Service (NCS) consultation. We set three main research questions to achieve this aim:

1. What qualitative evidence from service users is available on how national models of social care implemented in selected countries relate to key measures of user experience and person-centred outcomes?

2. What qualitative key informant evidence is there on lessons learned from national models of social care implemented in selected countries?

3. What quantitative evidence is available on the impact of national models of social care implemented in selected countries on key public health outcomes at a population level?