National Care Service: Charter and the Law

1. Introduction

1.1 The NCS Charter of Rights (the ‘Charter’) describes some of the rights of individuals who receive social care, social work or community health support. This document has been published alongside the Charter, to support people’s understanding of the legal basis for their rights as reflected in the Charter.

1.2 The Charter cannot give rise to new rights or alter any existing rights. Therefore, content presented with the phrase ‘you have rights to’ in the Charter must have bases in domestic law. The Charter reflects the law as at 25 March 2026 and includes rights from the Human Rights Act 1998 and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Act 2024.

1.3 This paper supports the Charter by setting out the legal bases of each right contained in the Charter, specifying the context in which the legislative bases apply. These include, and may not be limited to, adult social care, adult social work, adult support and protection and community health services.

Charter rights and their legal bases

1.4 The rights included in this document are those which are included in the Charter.

1.5 Within the Charter, the term ‘you have rights to’ is used to reflect that there are different legal bases in domestic law that provide variations on that right, or which impose relevant duties on public authorities and others in relation to these matters. These variations may relate to different contexts, different people who have a specific characteristic or type of experience, or different types of service provision.

1.6 Where such a ‘right’ exists in one context only (for example health service settings), it has not been referred to in the Charter using the term ‘you have rights to’. There are occasions when rights or duties that exist for one group of the population only (for example unpaid carers through the Carers Act (Scotland) 2016) have been included in the Charter, however these are clearly labelled as applying to this specific group only. In these cases the phrases ‘[name of group] have a right to’, ‘[public authority] has a duty to’ or ‘[public authority] must’ are used.

1.7 Equally, the phrase ‘you should expect’ is used where actions are recommended based on agreed standards for health and social care, and international human rights standards that are not yet incorporated into domestic law. This approach has been taken to avoid confusion or incorrect interpretation of such ‘expectations’ being legally enforceable in Scotland.

1.8 A document describing international human rights articles that are relevant to the Charter is also available.