National Care Service: Health and Social Care Standards - Co-design Partnership Programme report
This is a report from sessions Scottish Government held to review the Health and Social Care Standards. These sessions were part of our Co-design Partnership Programme.
What’s next
What’s next for the review of the Health and Social Care Standards
We have developed a working draft of a revised set of standards. This draft has been shaped by what people shared through this engagement, alongside other work as part of our steering group such as earlier stakeholder workshops.
Our next step will be to test this working draft with a wider group of people. We plan to hold further workshops to explore the possible changes and understand how well they work in practice. This will help us identify where the standards are clear and helpful, and where we could make further improvements.
We will ensure the revised standards are written in plain English and are easier to understand. We are also considering how the standards should be structured to make them more accessible and easier to use.
Alongside this, we are exploring making supporting guidance and practical tools to help people, staff and organisations understand the standards and use them consistently in everyday practice. What we heard through this engagement has been very helpful in shaping this work.
Once this further development and testing is complete, we plan to hold a formal public consultation later in the year. This will help us to gather wider views on the revised standards.
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.
Contact
Email: LEEP@gov.scot