National Care Service: Independent advocacy co-design report

What’s next

The Scottish Government remains committed to improving quality, fairness and consistency across the social care system.

The Care Reform (Scotland) Bill (formerly known as the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill) passed Stage 3 in the Scottish Parliament in June 2025. This is the final stage in the Parliament process. The Bill has also got formal agreement from the King, called Royal Assent, and has now been enshrined in law as an Act.

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

We have established an interim NCS Advisory Board which met for the first time on May 2025. This means that we can work on improvements quicker.

Soon a permanent board will be formed. 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.

What’s next for independent advocacy

We will use what people have told us to help inform our approach for £500,000 of funding for independent advocacy services in the financial year 2026 to 2027.

We want independent advocacy to be a way for people to have their voices heard and participate fully in decisions about their care. This funding will help increase independent advocacy provision to support more people in relation to social care support.

We will continue to work with existing providers of independent advocacy to learn about their work and explore how advocacy can support people when they use public social care services. We will share these co-design findings with them to work together to identify gaps in provision and develop practical solutions to address these.