National Care Service - governance and representation: co-design report

What’s next

Co-design continues to inform the design of the Advisory Board. It will help make sure that the board can fully engage people with lived experience and provide advice to ministers based on specialist and lived experience expertise.

Findings from these co-design sessions will help us:

• make decisions about how both the interim and final Advisory Board is set up and chaired
• create a board that supports members to work together
• shape how the Advisory Board considers the views of people who provide and access social care, social work and community health services

What’s next for the National Care Service

The Scottish Government remains committed to delivering a National Care Service to improve quality, fairness and consistency of social care support. We are also working to make improvements to the social care system now.

The Care Reform Bill (formerly known as the National Care Service Bill) passed Stage 3 in the Scottish Parliament in June 2025. This is the final stage in the Parliament process. At Stage 3, MSPs can make changes (called amendments) to the Bill.

As the Bill is now passed by the Scottish Parliament, it will be sent for Royal Assent. Royal Assent is when the bill gets formal agreement by the King and becomes an act of the Scottish Parliament. The Bill 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 continue with co-design throughout the development of the National Care Service.

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

In the meantime, we will continue to make improvements across the social care sector. This includes:

• the implementation of the Carers and Dementia Strategies
• work to embed a person-led approach through Getting It Right For Everyone (GIRFE)
• reducing the number of people in Delayed Discharge and the Drugs Mission
• improving terms and conditions for our valued workforce
• making social care work an attractive profession
• bringing even more talent into the sector

We have established an Interim NCS Advisory Board which met for the first time in May 2025. The interim board will:

• shape its own priorities and workplan
• advise on membership and ways of working
• provide advice to ministers on what further actions could be taken to support improvement across the integrated health and social care sector
• The full board, when it has been appointed, will continue to develop this

At the same time, a fair and open appointments process will be designed to recruit an independent chair and individual members for the full board to continue the work of the interim board. This process will be informed by the outputs of the co-design work that we carried out. We will ensure that the right support is available to ensure that all members can take part equally.

All members will be responsible for making sure that people with experience of integrated health and social care services inform the board’s work.