Scottish ministers have announced their backing for a new world-leading commitment on care, in the form of a new National Outcome in Care in the revised Scottish Government National Performance Framework (NPF).

This development has been secured based on research by UWS staff through the UWS-Oxfam Partnership which provided the campaign ‘A Scotland That Cares’ with a blueprint to enable public, stakeholder and political commitments to creating this new national outcome on care.

The draft new National Outcomes recommended by Scottish Ministers have been lodged at the Scottish Parliament for scrutiny by MSPs before being finalised, and they include a new National Outcome on Care, which states ‘We are cared for as we need throughout our lives and value all those providing care’.  

As well as covering care at all stages of a person’s life, the new National Outcome will cover everyone with caring responsibilities in Scotland; from unpaid carers looking after friends and family, including young carers, to parents looking after children and paid social care and childcare workers.

To develop the blueprint, UWS researchers Professor Stephen Gibb, Dr Chloe Maclean, Dr Hartwig Pautz and Dr Nicola Hay engaged with a coalition of stakeholders, to identify the focus and scope of research, to operationalise the outcome, and disseminate that research.

Dr Chloe MacLean, co-lead of the UWS-Oxfam Partnership said: "The Scottish Government’s National Performance Framework  previously included eleven National Outcomes to describe ‘the kind of Scotland’ it wishes to create. However, there was  no Outcome on care - an omission which our research has helped to change."

Professor Stephen Gibb (pictured above) added: "This is a major change in itself, but also only the beginning, as this must signify a step-change in how both unpaid and paid carers in Scotland are valued and supported’.  

This makes Scotland one of the first countries in the world to make such an explicit and comprehensive commitment to driving and transparently measuring progress on how care and, crucially, those who look after someone, are valued.  

The campaign, backed by carers across Scotland and over 50 third sector or civic organisations, was launched at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic when people and many politicians took to their doorsteps to ‘clap for carers’ and other key workers.

Dr Hartwig Pautz of the UWS-Oxfam Partnership said: "As well as covering care at all stages of a person’s life, the new National Outcome will cover everyone with caring responsibilities in Scotland; from unpaid carers looking after friends and family, including young carers, to parents looking after children and paid social care and childcare workers.

UWS researchers will continue to engage with the process of seeing this new national care outcome develop and come into practice, as all the new NPF outcomes are debated in Parliament. UWS researchers also continue to engage in research around the care workforce development as the proposed National Care Service is shaped through phases of legislation.