Social Covenant Steering Group minutes: July 2024

Attendees and apologies

Social Covenant Steering Group Members

• Brian Wilson
• Cathie Russell
• Dr Pauline Nolan
• Roseann Kelly
• Shubhanna Hussain-Ahmed
• Chris Fisher
• Tommy Whitelaw
• Dr Caroline Gould
• Marion McArdle
• Dr Jim Elder-Woodward

Scottish Government

• Minister for Social Care, Mental Wellbeing and Sport – Maree Todd (Chair)
• National Care Service (NCS) Communications and Engagement
• Freedom of Information (FOI) Policy
• NCS National Governance and Structures

Items and actions

Welcome

The Chair welcomed everyone, introduced the Scottish Government officials on the call, and outlined the agenda. 

Freedom of Information session

An SG official from the FOI unit presented slides which were circulated to members ahead of the meeting.

After the presentation, members raised the following points:

• Transparency and accountability is not being delivered properly through local authorities, which is why some stakeholders wanted accountability to be with the SG.
• The process of making an FOI request is reasonably accessible for professionals making requests as part of their roles, however, for those not professionally involved, most people are not even aware the process exists.
• The private sector should be subject to FOI, otherwise they are not held accountable.
• There should be FOI for everyone receiving public funding, though unsure if FOI is the right approach to achieve the transparency needed. There needs to be a change of culture towards trust and accountability, and FOI may not be the best way achieve this in the context of the NCS.
• If there is to be a consultation with lived experience persons, information needs to be made more readily accessible and comprehensible.
• Most FOI requests do not come from individuals, so there is a gap there.
• There needs to be support set up to make the FOI process accessible for individuals.
• The subject access requests process was born from a previous lack of transparency, which is a wider culture issue.

NCS National Board presentation

The Chair then introduced SG officials from the NCS National Governance and Structures team, who presented on the NCS National Board.

Comfort break and split into breakout sessions

The group was then split into breakout sessions to discuss questions posed in the National Board presentation.

Facilitator feedback

The Chair then handed over to the breakout discussion facilitators to share the outcomes from their sessions with the main group.

From the breakout discussions, the following points were raised:

• The system needs to see the person as a person.
• Accessibility is important: the way in which meetings are set up, the papers provided, jargon.
• Training needs to be accessible too, to avoid it being ableist.
• Suggestion for a sub-group of the Board with wider lived experience, as difficult to capture wide views in the main group.
• Need to consider how the Board will cover intersectionality and wider representation.
• Most important aspects of the Board are honesty, transparency, and effectively listening to people.
• There needs to be connection and a strong sense of focus for all members of the Board.
• The Board needs a strong sense of purpose, for all to work together towards a clear goal.
• Trauma-informed training should be incorporated into training for the Board.

Any other business

The Chair thanked members for engaging with the sessions and taking part in discussions. The Chair informed members that the co-design team will return to a future meeting to share the insights and results from the NCS Board sessions. The Chair then reminded members to share input for the NCS National Forum with the team by 2 August.

The Chair thanked everyone and closed the meeting.