COSLA meetings regarding social care support charges: FOI release

Information requested

The Scottish Government and COSLA have committed to exploring and agreeing an approach to ending all non-residential social care support charges within the lifetime of this Parliament.

What progress has been made with this issue;-

• Have meetings between the Scottish Government & COSLA taken place
• Dates of meetings
• Are there any recommendations or agreements
• Are there any minutes/notes of meetings. Are they available to the public, how can they be accessed,
• Timeline for bringing legislation to ending all non-residential social care support charges within the lifetime of this Parliament.

Response

The answer to your questions are:

1. Yes, regular engagements take place between Scottish Government Officials and CoSLA representatives to discuss a number of cross working initiatives.

2. Meetings took place on 9th, 17th October 2024 and 8th January 2025. During these meetings discussions took place around the 2024 Programme for Government (PfG)

3. A number of options have been discussed, which are being evaluated around the PfG commitment to review options and continue discussions about the removal of Non Residential Care Charges.

4. No formal minutes where recorded or stored by the Scottish Government aside from any actions for future meetings. Actions and summaries listed below:

• SG will explore options across government that are currently open to care providers that can help with operational costs, CoSLA will look at ways this information can be disseminated to providers through the Chief officers.
• SG will take the Charging Survey data gathered by CoSLA analyse and produce report for CoSLA and SG colleagues.
• SG and CoSLA will continue to examine how to gather social care data from partners, Scotland Excel, CI, IJB’s. SG will consider how we can develop a framework to assist with this and agree information sharing agreements.
• SG and CoSLA began the conversation about how important understanding the true cost of care will be as we work together to understand charging cost and wider social care reform.
• CoSLA advised that they had been receiving emails from stakeholders within the Disability sector regarding the removal of non-residential charges. SG agrees that this important issue should be further developed and discussed with CoSLA and stakeholders. Working group to be set up.
• SG and CoSLA discussed the important tool digital telecare will play in preventing people from going into hospital and reducing delayed discharge especially within rural areas of Scotland. SG and CoSLA agreed to continue to develop this work further.
• SG and CoSLA agreed the need to hold these meeting regularly to progress this work across government.

5. The need to bring forward legislation will not be known until all options have been reviewed, evaluated and discussed with Ministers’.

About FOI

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