Interim National Care Service Advisory Board: Advice to Scottish Ministers and Council Leaders - Composition of the final National Care Service Advisory Board

Background

Scottish Ministers had originally intended to establish a National Care Service Board as a public body, with its own legal identity and functions. That meant that it would have a governance board with members who would make sure that the board delivered effectively.

Not everybody agreed with that approach. Ministers reflected on all feedback, so that they could decide how to continue the work.

On 23 January, the Minister for Social Care, Mental Wellbeing and Sport set out a new approach.^[1]

Scottish Ministers decided that the National Care Service work should continue without making legal changes to the structures and governance arrangements already in place. A National Care Service Advisory Board would be established. This would not be a public body established in law. Rather than the advisory board having a governance role or taking actions independently of ministers, it was established with advisory status. To achieve this, the board would still bring together leaders and people who have lived experience, to make improvements that will lead to consistent, fair, high-quality services.

Co-design work was originally set up to inform how a public body National Care Service Board should operate, to ensure lived experience was embedded in decision making. Although the plan changed, lessons from this work are still relevant to the new Advisory Board.

Co-design work highlighted that individual Board members should be recruited through a fair and open process. An open recruitment process takes some time to complete. An interim Board was established so that improvement work could begin as soon as possible, while the recruitment was underway.

The interim Board was built on the findings from co-design, which identified the different experiences and perspectives which should be included on a Board. Ministers then directly invited some people from these groups, or in some cases asked groups or organisations to nominate members.

This led to an interim Advisory Board membership as follows:

• Independent Chair
• Someone with experience of a long term health condition or disability
• Someone with experience of being an unpaid carer
• Someone with experience of directly providing services as part of the workforce
• Someone with experience of having been in care as a child or young person
• Someone with strategic level experience of having provided independent advocacy
• Care provider representative organisation – CCPS
• Care provider representative organisation – Scottish Care
• Care provider chief executive – Enable
• Disabled-people led organisation – Glasgow Disability Alliance
• Independent Living Fund
• COSLA, senior official
• Scottish Government, senior official
• Local authority, chief executive
• NHS Health board, chief executive
• Integration authority, Chief Officer
• Children and families leadership group, deputy chair

The STUC was also invited to nominate a member to the interim Board. This invitation was declined, as the STUC felt that a single position on the Board could not reflect the diverse interests of the different trades unions within its membership. However, STUC did agree that some of their members could be involved in the supporting infrastructure of the board to feed their perspectives into the Board’s process of constructing its advice.

The interim Board therefore totals 17 members. This exceeds the recommendations from co-design, which indicated that a Board of 12 – 15 was optimum, in order to enable meaningful discussion to which everyone had an opportunity to contribute and arrive at consensus. In recognition of this, the letters of invitation to the three care provider members indicated:

“For the interim Board, we are inviting participation from a care provider organisation, as well as Scottish Care and CCPS. In the interests of keeping the board membership to a manageable size, however, we would expect to rationalise the provider perspective on the final Board. We will invite the interim Board to advise on what membership will best secure that viewpoint.”