Officer's View on the National Care Service Bill

National Care Service (Scotland) Bill

The Bill proposes to establish a National Care Service.

The Bill allows Scottish Ministers to transfer social care responsibility from local authorities to a new, national service. This could include adult and children’s services, as well as areas such as justice social work. Scottish Ministers will also be able to transfer healthcare functions from the NHS to the proposed National Care Service.

Care or health services transferred to the new service could be delivered nationally or locally. The Bill proposes that new bodies called “care boards” would be responsible for delivering care locally. 

As well as proposing to establish a National Care Service, the Bill makes other changes including:

• allowing information to be shared by the proposed National Care Service and the NHS
• introducing a right to breaks for carers
• giving rights to people living in adult care homes to see the people important to them (known as “Anne’s Law”)

MSPs on the Scottish Parliament’s Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and other committees, are looking at the details of the proposals, and want to know what people think about them.

Your responses to the questions within this survey will form the basis of the response which will be submitted on behalf of the partnership. To help you do this, you may wish to read the following background information about the proposals and the key terms that it would be helpful to understand:

• You can read more about the Bill on the Scottish Parliament website
• You can read more about what the Bill does in the explanatory notes 
• You can read more about why this Bill has been created in the Policy Memorandum
• You can read about how much the Bill is likely to cost in the Financial Memorandum 

The survey will close at midnight on Sunday 14th August 2022.