Adult social care support and community health: draft Scottish learning and improvement framework

Introduction

The Independent Review of Adult Social Care (IRASC) recommended that there should be “a new approach to improving outcomes – closing the implementation gap, a new system for managing quality”.

IRASC recognised that there was a wide range of improvement activity underway however, to improve outcomes and experiences for people who use social care support, unpaid carers and the workforce, emphasised a need for consistency and clarity across the system.

To achieve the intention of the IRASC recommendation and to realise the commitments made in the Joint Statement of Intent and Next Steps for Adult Social Care 2022-23, a Scottish Learning and Improvement Framework for Adult Social Care Support and Community Health (SLIF) has been developed. This has been jointly led by Scottish Government, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) and the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers (SOLACE).

A co-production approach has been applied to the development of this draft framework. During this process, a number of key challenges were identified as directly impacting on the ability of the wider sector to adopt and embed a consistent improvement approach. These included:

• Current pressures in the system;
• Focus being mostly on scrutiny and performance management which creates a data reporting burden and limits the capacity to move to data collection for continual learning;
• Insufficient data capture to help understand systemic issues;
• Multiple unaligned improvement frameworks, standards and outcomes which apply within service areas, creating duplication and reporting challenges;
• Limited sharing of practice and learning between areas and/or at the national or local level.

Throughout the co-production process, these challenges have been recognised and considered in the development of the framework and in planning for the discovery and testing phases. In relation to these challenges, Figure 1 sets out the core aims of the Scottish Learning and Improvement Framework.

The National Learning Cycle feeds into the Local Learning Cycle, supporting better information for decision making at both the national and local level.

Five core aims of the SLIF include:

National Insights

Build Capacity and Skills for Improvement

Move from scrutiny to Improvement system

Consistency and clarity for improvement activities

Support data collection to inform decisions