National Care Service - Expert Legislative Advisory Group minutes: March 2024

Attendees and apologies

The meeting was attended by:

• Scottish Government staff
• stakeholder organisations
• people with experience of community health, social work and social care services

Items and actions

Welcome and introductions

The Chair thanked everyone for attending at short notice. Due to the large number of attendees on the call (approximately 40), the Chair asked everyone to introduce themselves in the Teams chat. The Chair then outlined the agenda items of discussion.

Next steps in Parliamentary process

The Chair gave a verbal update on the National Care Service (NCS) Bill, outlining that Stage 1 was passed on 29 February and we are now in Stage 2 of the Bill process.

The Chair stated that the intent of this group is to ensure the stage 2 amendments are comprehensive and robust.

Establishment of Expert Legislative Advisory Group (ELAG) and Terms of Reference (ToR)

During this agenda item, the Chair opened discussion around several aspects of the ELAG on timing and membership, terms of reference, and designing the Group’s programme of work.

Timing and membership

The Chair confirmed that the initial intention is for the ELAG to run for the next two months, after which timings can be reviewed with the chance to extend further. Membership will be evolving based on each meeting’s discussion priorities. Initial membership has been chosen either due to their role, or national position, or lived experience and were nominated from within the SG by policy leads.

Designing programme of work

The Chair shared potential areas of discussion for the group and welcomed other suggestions from members:

• NCS Board
• NCS local – IJB reform, including membership, procedure and accountability and direct funding
• NCS local
• principles, outcomes and standards, and Charter, complaints and advocacy
• strategies and reports, and support, monitoring and improvement
• commissioning and procurement, Anne’s law, and Children’s and Justice

Actions

• the SG will consider further how best to pull together evidence from other ongoing NCS engagement and co-design, and feed it into this group
• the SG will consider issues raised around confidentiality for membership organisations, and how best to reflect this in the group’s ToR
• the SG will take feedback around accessibility on board, and take up the member’s offer of advice separately
• the SG will look to incorporate existing analysis around the Bill’s interaction with other pieces of legislation in a future agenda item