National Care Service: Human Rights and the Charter

1. Introduction

The NCS Charter of Rights (‘the Charter’) includes information about people’s rights when accessing social care, social work and community health support in Scotland. You can find the Charter by going to www.mygov.scot/ncs-charter.

The Charter was co-designed with people with experience of accessing and providing social care, social work and community health support, including unpaid carers. People from different backgrounds, ages, characteristics and from different parts of Scotland took part in co-design activities and shared their ideas about what should be included in the Charter, how it should be structured, designed and implemented. You can read more about how the Charter was developed by reading the Agreeing Phase Co-design Report.

People said that they wanted the Charter to be short, simple and accessible but they also said that they wanted more information about human rights that are relevant to social care, social work and community health. Some people suggested that there should be a short and accessible Charter and a separate paper covering these broader human rights.

This document supports the NCS Charter of Rights by doing the following:

• it describes some of the key human rights that are engaged by social care, social work and community health
• it includes information about human rights in domestic law and international law
• it describes how these rights are reflected in the Charter

This document does not mention every human right. This document focuses on some of the rights that are most relevant to social care, social work and community health.

This document also does not describe rights that are specifically for children which are part of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Act 2024 directly incorporates the UNCRC into devolved domestic law in Scotland within the limits of devolved competence.

Information for children about these rights is available on the Young Scot ‘Activate Your Rights’ webpage.