Self-directed support: improvement plan 2023 to 2027

How will we know the Plan is working?

The Independent Review of Adult Social Care (IRASC) states its ambition to close the implementation gap, and to make ‘new provision for learning and improvement programmes for social work and social care, to support quality, improvement, consistency, and professionalism’.

In line with this, this section outlines our approach to monitoring, learning and evaluation, taking account of what has been learned from the implementation of the previous Plan.

Scotland has a wealth of social care data, but there still remains large gaps in our current knowledge, such as around unmet needs and people’s experiences and outcomes, including the extent to which information about SDS options is made available, the extent to which eligible people receive the SDS option that they wanted, and whether that option met their outcomes.

Below are several key sources of national strategic priorities across health and social care which are likely to be of relevance to this Plan and a useful starting point for understanding the impact the Plan should have.

1. Scottish Government budgetary information about health and social care in 2022/23 states that it contributes towards the following national outcomes: Health, Children and Young People, and Human Rights.

2. The SG-COSLA joint Statement of Intent mentions the importance of improving the experience and outcomes of the people who access social care support. It states that ‘to support a preventative approach, people must have a strong voice in planning their own care. Their strengths and needs must be at the centre of the approach throughout, regardless of what services people interact... with each person having a voice in the care and support they receive.’

3. The National Performance Framework, which includes the following indicator (currently in development pending review of the Framework): public services treat people with dignity and respect.

4. Health and Social Care Standards (2017) describe headline outcomes and the descriptive statements which set out the standard of care and support a person can expect. ‘1: I experience high quality care and support that is right for me. 2: I am fully involved in all decisions about my care and support. 3: I have confidence in the people who support and care for me. 4: I have confidence in the organisation providing my care and support. 5: I experience a high-quality environment if the organisation provides the premises.’

5. The national health and wellbeing framework of 2015 states nine person-centred outcomes which provide a strategic framework for the planning and delivery of health and social care services.

7. The SDS Framework of Standards sets out a clear formulation of what ‘good’ looks like and is written specifically for local authorities to provide them with an overarching structure, aligned to legislation and statutory guidance, for further implementation of the self-directed support approach and principles.

8. Finally the Change Map at the heart of the SDS Implementation Plan 2019-2021 lists five major outcomes. ‘People’s social care support outcomes are met’; ‘senior decision-makers and systems create the culture and conditions[5] for choice and control over social care support, ‘workers across all aspects of social care support exercise the appropriate values, skills, knowledge and confidence, ‘people are empowered to make informed decisions about their support’, and; ‘people have choice and control over their social care support’. However, there are no proposed indicators on how progress on outcomes should be measured and understood.

The above sources reflect that improvement in social care support should be understood as being person-centred or person-led and reflect human rights as expressed in the SDS Act 2013 and other related legislation and guidance.

This Plan’s monitoring and evaluation approach is based on the assumption that, in order to generate confidence that the Plan has identified the most effective means of achieving its outcomes, each activity in this Plan must demonstrate a clear connection to a person-centred contribution to improvement.

In order to understand whether this Plan is working, we will make arrangements for evaluating its effectiveness and involve supported people with lived experience in the evaluation design. The gathering of information and data for improvement should take into account and not duplicate efforts made by other organisations as part of their own improvement and data gathering plans.

A short monitoring and evaluation plan will be developed later in 2023 through the National SDS Collaboration to support how individual activities will be monitored and evaluated. The principal goal of the monitoring and evaluation plan will be to focus on improving the impact of activities and to facilitate a continuous learning approach. The perspectives, values and questions of supported people will be at the heart of the design of the evaluation of the Plan. The annual progress report will be coherent with the approach set out in the monitoring and evaluation plan.