The Scottish Parliament is in recess from 28 June to 31 August. We will respond to petitions as soon as we can.
If your petition is seeking emergency action or an urgent policy change, we would advise you to contact one of your 8 MSPs or the Scottish Government directly. Please be aware that the public petitions process is a thorough and often lengthy process and is not designed to respond to emergencies.
Thank you for your patience and understanding.
The Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Team
Closed petition PE2114: Ensure effective regulation and oversight of social care services in Scotland
Calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to ensure the effective regulation and oversight of social care services by replacing the Care Inspectorate with a new, independent oversight body that:
has a specific focus on risk management
uses regulatory and analytical expertise to identify and eradicate poor practice
meaningfully engages with service operators and those with lay expertise to help deliver better, more transparent social care outcomes for people in Scotland.
Background information
BetterCareScotland's data, based on the experiences of our over 3,000 members, together with publicly available information, indicate that the Care Inspectorate, and the bodies they regulate lack formal risk management, regulatory and analytical expertise to challenge when things go wrong for the vulnerable people in whose interest they have a statutory duty to act; and are not held to account for failing to identify risks to residents in poorly-resourced, commercially unviable independent care homes for older people that operate as 'closed cultures'.
This enables bad practice and encourages risk-taking by owners who are kept in business by their local council, leading to an inevitable decline in the quality of care. It also deters openness and candour when things go wrong.
We envisage an independent oversight body of social care regulation operating in real time to address the country's record of poor social care outcomes. This would also help reduce complaints to the SPSO, allowing the Ombudsman to more closely focus on its own extensive remit.
This petition was considered by the Scottish Parliament
19 signatures