Self-directed support: improvement plan 2023 to 2027

How the SDS Improvement Plan 2023-27 has been developed

This Plan has arisen out of the work of the National SDS Collaboration, which first came together in April 2022. The National SDS Collaboration includes the Scottish Government, COSLA, individuals, and independent support and disabled peoples’ organisations from across the social care sector, all of whom have a stake in the successful delivery and implementation of self-directed support. The aim of the National Collaboration is to ensure that Scottish Government policy around SDS is informed by a wide range of people including those who have lived experience of SDS, or who are involved in delivering it. The National SDS Collaboration will continue to provide a forum for stakeholder discussion of the implementation and evaluation of the Plan.

The approach to writing this Plan is in line with the broad approach taken by the Collaboration to its engagement activity; to seek views from across the sector, including those with lived experience, to make sure the final Plan is informed by what those involved in SDS feel is most important.

A working group which includes representatives from Scottish Government, COSLA, Social Work Scotland, Self-Directed Support Scotland, In Control Scotland and others, formed to start work on the Plan. This group put together ideas for work that could take place over the coming years to improve SDS. This was based on their own understanding of what the priorities need to be, wide consensus on the importance of taking into account cross-cutting issues into account, and on recommendations from research into SDS that has been published in recent years.

An open consultation process ran during January-February 2023, to enable individuals, including those with experience of SDS, and organisations to feed in their views about the draft ideas, and highlight anything that they felt was missing.