Adult social care support and community health - learning and improvement framework: equality impact assessment

Background

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, it 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).

The Draft Scottish Learning and Improvement Framework for Adult Social Care Support and Community Health (SLIF) sets out the overarching vision and priorities for improvement in Adult Social Care Support, Social Work and Community Health that have been agreed by the Steering Group with representation across the system. It will support a move from a predominant focus on scrutiny and reporting, to an approach which further builds improvement and quality management into the system.

The SLIF has been developed to focus and track improvement across the outcomes that matter to people. The high-level priority themes and outcomes will be used to set a direction for action across the system, with the aim of creating clarity and consistency and through harnessing action towards this core common vision. The high-level nature of the themes and outcomes is intentional to encourage and support flexibility in delivery, at a service and local level, to achieve positive change to an outcome.

The SLIF will support the vision of The Health and Social Care Service Renewal Framework (SRF) which provides a high-level guide for change, to ensure the sustainability, efficiency, quality, and accessibility of health and social care services in Scotland.

Recent work has concentrated on the operationalisation of the SLIF. This phase of development has been completed with our stakeholders to move the framework from a strategic document to one that can be used in services. A report from this work is available on the SLIF page of the Scottish Government Website: Report from the Development of the SLIF digital Tool.