National Care Service - realising rights and responsibilities: regional forums - findings summary

What we learned

People were generally supportive of the need to inform people about their rights through a charter.

We will act on what people have told us in the summer forums, wider co-design activities, and stakeholder engagement events and update the draft charter to meet their needs.

We learned a great deal during these events and some of the key themes are set out below.

Accessibility

As expected, people told us that the rights in the charter need to be presented in plain language, free of jargon and in a range of accessible formats.

We worked with people to identify words and sections of the draft content that were too complex or hard to understand. People told us that:

• the section on judicial review was not clear or they felt that it ‘contradicted itself’
• words such as ‘integrated’ and ‘collaboration’ were overly long and could be difficult to understand
• terms such as ‘community health’ and ‘self-directed support’ may be unfamiliar to some people and that the charter should include a short definition to explain what they are

Changes to the charter structure and content will be made to reflect what people have told us in the sessions. This will help to make the charter more accessible and functional.

A consistent message was that a lengthy, written charter will not meet everyone’s needs. There were different ideas on how to address this including:

• keeping the charter as concise as possible and providing the charter in a range of formats
• using posters, leaflets or booklets, as this will be more accessible for some people and may help raise awareness of the charter

From earlier co-design we know that people feel it will be important for the charter to be made available in Easy Read, Braille, BSL and other languages.

Getting the right balance between making sure the charter contains detailed information that people need and keeping the charter short, clear and easy to use will require more work. We will continue to do this work through co-design.

Once co-design on the content of the charter is complete, we will begin work to co-design different formats of the charter to reflect what people told us. This will include accessible formats and different languages and exploring options for posters, leaflets and booklets.

Charter detail and language

In other co-design activities before this event, we learned that people want the charter to be declarative and unambiguous. This means that people would be clear on what to expect and delivery bodies ‘can’t wriggle out’ of their duties.

In the summer events people pointed out vague statements in the draft charter such as ‘may happen’ or ‘where possible’. They suggested that we change these to concrete statements and provide examples.

We will review these statements and update them to make them more declarative, but we may not be able do this for all the statements people suggested.

People also told us that some sections of the charter were vague because they needed more detail, such as in the complaints section and in the introduction.

In the complaints section people suggested more detail should be provided on how to make a complaint, preferably using a simple diagram and including timelines.

In the introduction, people felt that more detail should be provided about:

• what services are National Care Service (NCS) services
• who works for the NCS

This would help people better understand what the NCS does and how it relates to their support.

We will continue to co-design the introduction section to:

• provide explanations of what the NCS is
• who will be part of the NCS
• include instructions on how the complaints process will work, complete with diagrams and timescales

Rights in the charter

We were keen to hear people’s views on the rights set out in the charter, particularly if there were any missing or if they disagreed with any of the rights included.

People were generally supportive of the rights in the draft charter. A small number of people felt that there were some rights that may be missing from the charter.

For example, young carers at one of the events explained the importance of the right to breaks from caring and felt that this should be included in the charter.

It is essential that the rights set out in the charter are the right ones. We will continue to explore the need for additional rights through our wider co-design activities and with equality and human rights stakeholders. For the rights that people have identified as missing, such as rights to breaks from caring, we will begin work to include these in the draft charter where possible.

Some people suggested the rights in the charter could be clearer and more relatable. They suggested this could be done by providing more information on the rights in different contexts. For example, the right to be treated equally and the right to a private and family life. We also heard that examples of rights in practice would help people more fully understand the charter and be able to relate them to their own experiences and situations.

In more rural areas, people told us about the barriers they face trying to access:

• social care
• social work
• community health services
• transport
• digital connectivity

People told us that they want this to be reflected in the ‘Equality, Dignity and Respect’ section of the charter. This would make it clear that people should have equal access to services and support in rural and urban areas.

Some people suggested that the section on the ‘right to family and private life’ could include information on the needs of friends and family living with a person accessing care support, while also ensuring that the person accessing care has privacy.

New language in the ‘rights to equality section’ and ‘rights to a private and family life’ section will be developed and tested with people with lived experience of accessing and providing care to better reflect the needs or rural communities and families.

Information on further support and advocacy in the charter

People suggested some more things that could be included in the charter that would help people access care support. These included:

• some people from rural and remote areas suggested that the charter could provide information on how to get transport support to attend NCS appointments, where available
• signposting and links to existing advice, guidance and support that people might not be aware of such as the Health and Social Care Standards
• the importance of advocacy to supporting people to get the best out of the available support. People told us about the range of advocacy that they accessed including independent advocacy and peer advocates and felt that this should be reflected in the charter