The Scottish Government has this week published its priorities for the coming year in Protecting Scotland's future, a programme that is broadly focused on climate change, a fair and green economy, improving outcomes through public services, and thriving communities.
The improving outcomes priorities include:
Health and social care
- Develop statutory guidance for community engagement and participation in the design and delivery of health and social care services.
- Develop a framework for community-based health and social care integrated services to help ensure that what works to improve outcomes in local community settings is shared and promoted across the whole system.
- Carry out an audit of existing national leadership programmes and improving collaborative working with all health and social care partners, including the third and independent sectors.
- Empower integration authorities to use all of the resources allocated to them in ways which work best for the people and communities they serve and to improve the understanding of accountabilities and responsibilities across the system.
- Improve strategic inspection by making sure it better reflects how different bodies need to work together to improve outcomes.
Adult social care reform
- Develop a future vision for a sustainable care home sector as part of the wider health and social care landscape.
- Work with health and social care partnerships, local authorities, providers and improvement organisations to make it easier to design and implement models of care which support the workforce to provide flexible, consistent care and support for people across care at home, care homes and other types of support
- Continue to support the sector to develop a national framework agreement for both purchased and commissioned care and support services. This will increase consistency in the way in which support is commissioned, purchased and delivered across the country, and will strengthen the focus on person-centred and outcomes focused practice.
- Support Social Work Scotland to work with local authorities and others to design and test a framework of practice for self-directed support across Scotland, including approaches to assessment and resource allocation.
Mental health
- Establish a community wellbeing services across Scotland, focusing initially on children and young people from ages 5-24, as well as develop a new 24/7 crisis support specifically for young people and their families.
- Create a Scottish Mental Health Policy and Research Forum to improve the quality and quantity of mental health clinical research in Scotland.
- Establish a Personality Disorder Managed Network to improve services, supporting a national roll out of patient self-management training.
- Develop and promote best practice in local suicide prevention planning and learning reviews of suicides.
Workforce
- Launch a national recruitment campaign for nursing, midwifery, allied health professionals and healthcare scientists later this year and
a campaign for social work and social care professionals in 2020. - Improve how newly-qualified social workers are supported.
Our work
Iriss has supported and will continue to support these priority areas of work. Some of our contribution to date includes:
- Research evidence and tools to support community engagement and participation in the design and delivery of services
- Improving personal outcomes and partnership approaches
- Supporting leadership capacity and capability of the workforce
- Pathways for self-directed support
- Supporting the recruitment and retention of the social services workforce
- Developing resources to support newly qualified social workers find and use evidence in the supported year
Read a summary of our work plan 2019-20. If you would like to discuss our work or resources, please contact: enquiries@iriss.org.uk
