National Care Service: Procurement - Co-design Partnership Programme report

Co-design sessions

Public bodies, like councils, use evaluation questions when choosing service providers. They use these questions to test the quality of the service. Providers must answer these questions, and their answers are usually scored from 0 to 4 based on quality.

In 2024, supported people took part in work to identify what matters most when buying support services. They said that human rights are the most important principle.

This project built on that work by involving supported people in designing tools and guidance about human rights in public contracts.

We ran 4 co-design sessions on social care procurement. These were with:

• Carr Gomm
• Next Chapters
• MECOPP (Minority Ethnic Carers of Older People Project)
• the Scottish Commission for people with Learning Disabilities (SCLD)

We also received written and verbal feedback from Glasgow Disability Alliance on behalf of their members. All sessions, except MECOPP which was in person, were held online.

In total 45 participants were involved.

Scottish Government staff attended each session to take notes and support the discussion.

How we adapted the sessions

We worked with each charity to make sure what we planned to share was right for the people attending the workshop. This is why we sent information to each group before the session. The staff from partner organisations led the workshops.

Different approaches were used with different groups, such as:

• using real-life scenarios (for example going to the cinema) to explain ideas
• focusing on draft guidance when requested
• making sure group members included people with experience of procurement

Being flexible with the session design helped people feel safe and able to share their views.

What we discussed

In the sessions, we:

• tested and developed questions about human rights
• explored how answers to these questions should be scored
• asked people what good and poor responses look like
• asked people how they would score responses and why
• one session asked people to provide feedback on draft guidance