The Scottish government has launched the process to recruit a chair with lived experience to head up Scotland’s National Care Service Advisory Board. It comes as the person leading the interim board gave an update on their work so far.

Speaking at today’s annual National Care Service Forum for the first time since taking up the role of chair of the interim NCS Advisory Board, Susan Douglas-Scott told delegates much of her role has been to listen to people with lived experience:

“The way that we deliver social care needs to really reflect people's needs and how they choose to live their lives. It needs to bring life to the things that mean people's lives have value, meaning and purpose, and that that's embedded into their way of being in this world.

“So, I believe that, in order to effect this, we have to reform the way that we do things, the way we deliver health and care. It's hard work for our public partners – I'm not naïve, I recognise that – but we have challenges that we need to face together.”

Ms Douglas-Scott said her involvement in campaigning for people’s rights began when she was told as a 15 year old with a disability all the things she shouldn’t think about doing – something, she said, that “did not sit well with me”.

“I was really excited by this opportunity [to be interim chair], because I really believe in the development of that national voice and that national approach to ensure that everyone who needs social care gets treated in the same way, an opportunity to address people's human rights and improve citizenship for the growing number of people who need social care support, and also the 1000s and 1000s of unpaid carers.

“I am also really keen to see an improvement in the wellbeing of the people who work in the service of delivering social care and making sure that the front-line staff are supported through improvements in their conditions.”

She said the interim group has met four times since coming into being and intends to meet twice more before handing over to a permanent board at the end of March next year.

Five interconnecting priorities, she said, have emerged:

• GIRFE, ‘getting it right for everyone’: designing services that focus on the individual;
• Self-directed support;
• Ensuring the legislation for a right to short breaks for carers is taken forward across Scotland;
• Coming Home, the policy of ensuring people with complex needs live in the right place for them; and
• Fair work for people working in social care.

“We are well placed to give independent advice because, as an advisory board, we're not political,” Ms Douglas Scott added. “So we move away from that space. We're taking a heat out of those conversations and shining a light on what needs to happen. We raise the profile of key concerns and add some momentum to the services’ efforts to address them.”

Speaking at the Forum, Scotland’s Minister for Social Care and Mental Wellbeing, Tom Arthur MSP said, although the original legislation creating a National Care Service did not become law, the principles remain:

“The National Care Service is about what we do to improve the system for everyone in Scotland. It is a programme of work that will bring about the change that people want to see. It is an action that is important, not a set of structures in how we are organised.

Mr Arthur said Scotland had, he believed, come a long way since the Feeley report on reforms to adult social care, but the work was not finished:

“We need a whole system approach to improvement in social care and community health. We need local authorities, providers, carers and communities to work together. We need innovation, collaboration and courage. Above all, we need to keep people and their rights, their voices and their dignity at the heart of everything we do, and on achieving that.”

Looking for a chair

The job description for the role of chair of the permanent advisory board states that candidates should have personal experience of accessing care for themselves, as a carer or having represented others.

People applying need to be able to lead a board so that its members can make decisions together, and have collaboration skills so they can work in ‘equal partnership with stakeholders and people with lived experience to shape decisions about care services in Scotland’.

The role of chair, alongside a Lived Experience Member of the NCS Advisory Board, are advertised on the Scottish government’s jobs pages. Applications for the roles close on 5 December.

 

Read more: Interim chair for government care advisory board; Lived experience at centre of care advisory group; "Watered down" care reforms disappoint sector; Millions less needed to deliver NCS; New social care minister appointed

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