National Care Service: complaints and redress research and co-design report

Introduction

This report sets out findings we have gathered through desk research and co-design. It focuses on complaints and redress within social care and community health.

A complaint is when a person tells a service they are unhappy with the service they receive. Redress means to fix something that has gone wrong.

We published a report in July 2024 with a summary of findings of our initial phase of desk based research and co-design around complaints and redress.

Since then, we have continued to discuss complaints and redress with people involved in social care and community health in Scotland.

This has been through three groups we worked with throughout the autumn and winter of 2024.

Working with these groups helped us understand their experiences about submitting, receiving and handling complaints. Their insights about social care and community health complaints help us identify what works well and what can improve.

This report details:

• what co-design we did with these groups (this included reviewing current complaints processes and ideas for improvement)
• what we learned from co-design and desk research
• how we can improve social care complaints and redress in the future

An independent review

The Independent Review of Adult Social Care in Scotland, also known as the Feeley Review, was published in February 2021. Among other things, it recommended the creation of a NCS and to improve the complaints and redress processes in social care:

• recommendation 9: when things do not work well for people and their rights have not been upheld, they must have fast recourse to an effective complaints system and to redress
• recommendation 12: a National Care Service should prioritise improved information and advice for carers, and an improved complaints process

As a result of this, we began an initial consultation on the NCS Bill. It showed strong support for creating a charter, which would set out people’s rights and responsibilities when accessing social care support through the NCS. This includes a need for information to fast and effective recourse when rights are not met, as described in recommendation 9 above.

Introduction of the NCS Bill

In June 2022, the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill (now known as the Care Reform (Scotland) Bill following amendments at Stage 2 of the Bill) was introduced to the Scottish Parliament.

The Bill as introduced set out that:

• Ministers would create a service for receiving and allocating complaints about NCS services
• Ministers would have the power to make regulations to improve how complaints about the NCS, and wider social care services, are handled.

In February 2024, the Scottish Parliament agreed to the general principles of the Bill at Stage 1 of the Bill process.

The removal of Part 1 of the NCS Bill

At Stage 2 of the Bill, Ministers reflected on feedback from stakeholders, Scottish Parliament committees, and people who access and deliver social care support.

On 25 February 2025, at the Health and Social Care and Sport committee meeting for Stage 2 considerations, the Committee agreed to Scottish Government amendments to remove Part 1 of the NCS Bill. This included the complaints service and regulation powers set out above.

The Care Reform (Scotland) Bill was passed by Scottish Parliament on 10 June 2025.

The final version of the Bill will now receive Royal Assent and be published and become the law. This new legislation, alongside the improvements we are already making, form the National Care Service.