National Care Service Charter of Rights: Co-design Agreeing Phase Report

What’s next

What’s next for the Charter

The feedback from our co-design sessions helped create the final version of the Charter, which was published in March 2026.

We want to make sure everyone can understand their rights so we have published the Charter in these formats:

• a summary
• an Easy Read version of the summary
• a webpage
• a British Sign Language (BSL) version

We also plan to make the Charter available in other community languages.

We are now planning how to put the Charter into action, based on what people told us about how to apply the Charter. We will check the progress of the Charter to make sure that it meets its aims for people accessing social care, social work and community health in Scotland.

What’s next for social care improvement

The Scottish Government remains committed to improving quality, fairness and consistency across the social care system.

The Care Reform (Scotland) Bill (formerly known as the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill) was passed by the Scottish Parliament in June 2025.

The Bill then got formal agreement from the King, called Royal Assent, and is part of Scots law as the Care Reform (Scotland) Act. The Scottish Government is now implementing the Act.

This work is a part of the wider, meaningful changes we are bringing to strengthen social care services across Scotland. Helping to improve the lives of those who access care, their loved ones and our valued workforce. 

We will be doing extra work with people from groups we know are currently underrepresented in our work so far.

We have established an NCS Advisory Board. All members of the Board will be responsible for making sure that people with experience of integrated health and social care services inform the Board’s work.