National Care Service: Complaints - Co-design Partnership Programme report

What’s next

What’s next for Complaints and redress

We will use what people have told us through this work to inform ongoing improvements in social care complaints.

We will continue to work with people, providers, and organisations across social care, social work and community health to understand where current arrangements work well and where there are gaps or barriers. This will support learning, consistency and improvement across the system.

As part of this, we will explore the feasibility and viability of approaches that could help people more easily understand where to raise a complaint, and how to do so. This includes considering if an online tool could play a role alongside existing routes and support. We will continue to use insights from lived experience to inform the next steps in this work.

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 was passed by the Scottish Parliament in June 2025 and became Scottish law (an Act). The Scottish Government is now implementing the Care Reform (Scotland) Act.

This work is a part of the wider, meaningful changes we are bringing to strengthen social care services across Scotland and to help 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.

Getting involved

We want to hear from as many people as possible as we try to improve social care, social work and community health. If you would like to share your experience or views or ideas, you can join our Lived Experience Experts Panel. If you join the panel, you’ll be invited to take part in different things like:

• surveys 
• interviews 
• helping come up with ideas about what the social care, community health or social work could be improved
• helping us understand what our research is telling us 
• helping us make sure we’re designing policies and services to meet everyone’s needs 

For more information about social care, community health and social work reform, visit gov.scot/ncs.