National Care Service - workforce charter: summary of findings - easy reads part 1 and 2

Our co-design work for the National Care Service has focused on different themes. Valuing the workforce is one of these themes. In our most recent work, we have been looking at ways in which a National Care Service workforce charter could support workforces to feel engaged, valued and supported.


Part 1: About the National Care Service

About the National Care Service

The Scottish Government is working to improve community health and social care support.

We are working with people across Scotland.

We want everyone to have access to high-quality local services across Scotland.

People should get them when they need them.

This is why we are designing a National Care Service.

The National Care Service will be designed with people and groups who have experience of accessing and delivering:

  • social care support
  • social work services
  • community health services

Introduction

As part of the co-design of the National Care Service we have been speaking to the people who work in:

  • social care support
  • social work services
  • community health services

The National Care Service is sometimes called the National Care Service.

Co-design means:

  • you can share your ideas and experiences with us
  • work with other people to find out how we can make things better

A Workforce Charter is a document that helps support workers.

This report shares the findings from our research and co-design that relate to a National Care Service Workforce Charter.

About the workforce co-design theme

Our co-design of the National Care Service, has been split up into themes. One of these themes is called Valuing the workforce.

The Valuing the workforce theme allowed us to hear about the experiences of community health and social care workers.

We wanted to hear about what makes community health and social care workers feel valued and supported.

We have been looking at ways that a National Care Service Workforce Charter could make community health and social care workers feel engaged, valued, and support.

About the workforce charter co-design sessions

In 2023 we had a number of co-design sessions in different parts of Scotland.

Workers from social work, social care and community health attended the sessions.

During these sessions, the idea of a National Care Service Workforce Charter was discussed.

To further discuss the idea of a National Care Service Workforce Charter, we ran more co-design sessions from:

  • November 2023 to January 2024
  • April 2024 to June 2024

In these sessions we heard from:

  • social work, social care and community health workers
  • people who represent social work, social care and community health workers
  • People working for Scottish Government and their advisors

All of the co-design sessions were online so that people from different parts of Scotland could take part.

Some sessions were only for specific groups of people. These included:

  • Trade union members
  • Black and ethnic minority workers members
  • Personal assistants
  • Disabled members of workers

This was to help these groups of people feel safe to share their experiences.

In the co-design sessions we discussed:

  • if a workforce charter would be beneficial
  • what we would use a workforce charter for
  • the content of a workforce charter

What we learned

We heard lots of different ideas in our sessions.

We learned 8 main things.

  • People who work in social care, social work and health want to feel like they belong in a National Care Service workforce
  • People need to understand who we mean when we talk about National Care Service workforce
  • People in the workforce need to understand what we mean when we talk about shared values
  • People think having workforce rights in a workforce charter would make them easier to understand
  • People in the workforce like the idea of the National Care Service making a pledge to support them
  • People in the workforce do not need a workforce charter to tell them about their role and responsibilities
  • Some other things need to be in place for a workforce charter to be useful. For example, there needs to be enough staff
  • We need to think carefully about how a workforce charter will be used by the workforce

How we will use this

We will use what he have heard to:

  • Understand how a workforce charter can help and support the workforce
  • Decide who we need to speak to in our next round of co-design sessions
  • Decide what information to include in a workforce charter. We will test an example of a workforce charter with people in the workforce

How to find out more

Read the full version of the report.

We have changed the way we make our longer documents and reports into easy read versions.

Before, we would have the same detail and information in both our plain English and easy read versions.

But that made easy read documents very long.

To make them shorter and easier to read, we will now make our easy read documents a summary of the main report.

Read more about why we have made this change.

Contact

Email: ncscommunications@gov.scot

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