Report published on Post-legislative Scrutiny of Self-Directed Support

The Scottish Parliament’s Health, Social Care and Sport Committee has today published its final report summarising the evidence it has collected during the process of scrutinising the Social Care (Self-directed Support) (Scotland) Act 2013.  

The aims of the Post-Legislative Scrutiny process were to find out if the legislation is working as intended, to contribute to better regulation, to improve the focus on implementation and delivery of policy aims and to identify and disseminate good practice. 

The process began in November 2023 with a call for evidence on the implementation of SDS and since heard evidence on the implementation of Self-directed support from witnesses including Self Directed Support Scotland throughout this summer. 

 

The report outlines several recommendations made by the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, which will inform the Scottish Government’s decision-making around Self-Directed Support (SDS) going forward.  

 

Key recommendations for the Scottish Government to consider include:  

• Ensuring that the Scottish Government going forward has national oversight over SDS implementation.  

• Strengthening commissioning and strategic planning processes to better account for the needs of people accessing social care and social workers.  

• Improving public and social worker knowledge of social care and SDS, including by improving access to social care and SDS information.  

• Increasing resources available to areas of work such as addressing issues around workforce recruitment and retention, fair work and staff training, enhancing consistency, and reviewing and improving local authority processes and implementation.  

• Improving the consistency of SDS implementation across local authorities, particularly around eligibility criteria and complaints procedures.  

• Improving accountability around local authority decision making, including over finance and budgets. 

• Facilitating a culture change within health and social care partnerships that enables better SDS implementation.  

• Developing a comprehensive data collection and monitoring and evaluation plan that captures how well SDS is meeting people’s needs .  

• Producing updated guidance on SDS implementation, which is centered around SDS principles rather than how to deliver the four SDS options. 

 

The report concludes that SDS legislation is good legislation and recognises the range of factors that have hampered the full implementation of the SDS Act since it came into force.  

In the context of the development of a National Care Service Bill, draft amendments to which are currently being consulted on (which you can contribute to here). The committee also concludes that it is important that the introduction of this Bill does not distract from the work still needed to be done to improve the implementation of SDS. 

You can read the full report here.