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The Way Forward for Care

Chapter 1 Introduction

1. Most of us need care services at some time in our lives. Such services look after the most vulnerable people in our society often enabling them to enjoy ordinary living, something that everybody wants. Such services can also make a key contribution to social inclusion, particularly allowing people to remain active members of communities. For children, care should not only provide safety but also promote their development. For the very youngest, quality care and education are closely intertwined.

2. Scotland has many excellent social workers, social care staff and early education staff. However, social work in particular has not been accorded the recognition of other professions even though it is a difficult job which requires a competent and confident workforce to deliver it effectively. With this background, Scottish Office Ministers issued a consultation paper on workforce regulation and education in November 1998 which highlighted the need for a body to regulate the social services workforce.

3. Scotland also has many excellent care services - nursing homes, residential care homes, home care services and other support services for adults, together with early education and childcare and services for looked after children. Most of these services operate to the highest standards, and have the needs of those who use them at the centre of all they do. However, the regulation system that ensures this is the case has grown up in a piecemeal fashion, with different types of services being regulated in different ways and some very important services, including home care, not being regulated at all. There is also no independent inspection of local authority services. We firmly believe that services which deal with the most vulnerable people in our society need independent scrutiny.

4. Regulation is also fragmented. There are a considerable number of regulatory bodies -the function rests with 32 local authorities and 15 health boards -all potentially operating to different standards and procedures. Standards in some cases tend to focus on inputs, such as the number of staff and the size of rooms, rather than the quality of the experience for the user. Equally, early education and childcare practice suggests the need to review the currently separate inspection regimes for "day care" and for pre-school education.

Aiming for Excellence

5. The White Paper Aiming for Excellence, Modernising Social Work Services in Scotland, was published in March 1999 by the Scottish Office. This proposed a national, independent system of regulation through a non-departmental public body, the Scottish Commission for the Regulation of Care, covering already regulated services and providers but also local authority provision and home care. This built on the report of the Working Group on Residential Care Home Registration Procedures published in 1996. The White Paper also proposed a Scottish Social Services Council to register the social services workforce, put in place codes of conduct and practice and ensure that staff get the education, training and qualifications they need to do their jobs. The White Paper also set out the intention that the Commission should replace local authorities as the regulator of childcare. A consultation paper was issued simultaneously examining the regulation of early education and childcare.

6. Following devolution, Scottish Ministers endorsed the proposals in the White Paper and included the establishment of the Scottish Social Services Council and an independent, national system for regulating care services and a new independent body to regulate childcare in their Programme for Government. A consultation paper issued in December 1999 Regulating Care and the Social Services Workforce considered how the proposals should be implemented through legislation and the scope of the services to be regulated. A total of 216 submissions were received in response to the consultation paper from a wide variety of national and local organisations across public, private and voluntary sectors.

7. Proposals for the regulation of early education and childcare were set out following consultation in Regulation of Early Education and Childcare: The Way Ahead published in May this year. A further consultation paper on the regulation of private and voluntary health care was published in March 2000.

Purpose of this Paper

8. This document sets out Scottish Ministers' decisions following the consultation period. It indicates the shape of the legislation required to implement the proposals and Ministers' intentions over non-statutory procedures. The intention is that legislation will be introduced into the Scottish Parliament as early as possible, so that the Scottish Commission for the Regulation of Care and the Scottish Social Services Council can be legally established in 2001.

Consultation

9. The proposals in this paper have benefited significantly from a consultation seminar in September 1999, the detailed consideration given by those responding to the various consultation papers and the work of members of the Reference Group established to provide advice and assistance as proposals developed (listed at Annex 1). In addition, Ministers and officials have discussed the proposals with many different public, private and voluntary organisations. We are most grateful for all the comments and views received.

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