Scotland's public services should be of the highest quality, continually improving, efficient and responsive to local people's needs. Crucially, they should be designed around the citizen and not the service.
Supporting a 10-year programme of reform, the Social Care (Self-directed Support) Bill will help to underpin new, flexible models of support, placing greater control and responsibility in the hands of citizens and thereby enhancing people's independence and wellbeing.
The Bill will:
- introduce the language and terminology of self-directed support into statute
- provide a consistent, clear framework in law, imposing firm duties on local authorities, setting out the options available to citizens and making it clear that it is the citizen's choice as to how much control they want to have
- widen eligibility to those who have been excluded up to this point, such as carers
- consolidate, modernise and clarify existing laws on direct payments