Child Rights and Wellbeing Impact Assessment (CRWIA) for the National Care Service Charter of Rights

Brief Summary

Type of proposal

Decision of a strategic nature relating to the rights and wellbeing of children

Name the proposal, and describe its overall aims and intended purpose

The National Care Service (NCS) Charter of Rights (‘the Charter’) aims to improve information about, and awareness of, people’s rights when accessing social care, social work and community health support. The Charter was developed in response to the Independent Review of Adult Social Care (IRASC) which recommended that people should better understand their rights to social care and support.

There is no legal requirement to publish the Charter. Draft provisions that would have required the publication of an NCS ‘Charter of Rights and Responsibilities’ were not included in the Care Reform Act (Scotland) 2025. However Ministers decided to develop and publish the Charter on non-statutory basis, determining that it would remain a positive and useful resource which supports fulfilment of a recommendation from the IRASC and contributes towards improving rights-based practice in integrated health and social care.

This CRWIA focuses on the impacts associated with the decision to continue to develop and publish the Charter. This includes decisions about the content and design of the Charter, and its relevance for children.

The Charter sets out people’s care-specific rights and what people should expect when they access social care, social work and community health support. It provides clear information about how to make a complaint if these rights are not met and about support services which can help people to claim their rights.

The rights set out in the Charter already exist in law, the Charter does not create any new rights or alter any existing ones.

The Charter is for anyone accessing or waiting to access social work, social care or community health services, including unpaid carers. The rights and expectations within the Charter are general and apply across all age groups unless otherwise stated.

The Charter aims to contribute towards delivery of rights-based care in Scotland. Intended impacts include:

• people know and understand their care-specific rights
• people who face the most barriers to realising their rights feel more empowered and able to claim their rights
• social care and health are delivered in a way that contributes towards a rights-respecting culture in Scotland

Start date of proposal’s development: April 2022

Start date of CRWIA process: January 2024^[1]