National Care Service: Ethical procurement co-design report

About Ethical Procurement

Procurement is the process public bodies use to buy services from other organisations or companies.

Our team is responsible for developing social care procurement guidance and tools, for use by councils.

Our aim is to change procurement practice in Scotland so that it delivers better services for people.

Before this project started we drafted ethical commissioning and procurement principles with lots of different stakeholders.

The draft ethical commissioning and procurement principles are:

• people with lived experience should be fully involved
• fair work for workers
• consideration of the environmental impacts of services
• high quality of the support services
• upholding human rights including choice
• financial transparency

Through the seldom heard voices co-design program we wanted to speak to people with lived experience so that they can help us develop the ethical principles.

We also wanted to hear about their experience of procurement, and ideas for how it can be improved. We want to make sure our updated guidance and tools to improve social care procurement has insights from people with lived experience.