Overview of the Act
3.The aim of the Act is to be an enabler of high quality care and improved outcomes for service users in both the health service and care services by helping to ensure appropriate staffing for high quality care.
4.The policy intention of the Scottish Ministers is to enable a rigorous, evidence-based approach to decision-making relating to staffing requirements that ensures appropriate staffing for the delivery of safe and effective care, which takes account of service user health and care needs and promotes a safe environment for both service users and staff. A more detailed explanation of the Act’s purpose can be found in the Policy Memorandum, which also explains the thinking and policy intentions that underpin it.
5.The Act creates a new statutory duty on geographical Health Boards, the Common Services Agency for the Scottish Health Service (“the Agency”), the four Special Health Boards that deliver clinical health care services (the State Hospitals Board, NHS 24, the National Waiting Times Centre Board and the Scottish Ambulance Service Board – referred to in the Act as ‘relevant Special Health Boards’) and all care service providers registered with Social Care and Social Work Improvement Scotland (SCSWIS), known as the Care Inspectorate, to ensure that there are appropriate numbers of suitably qualified staff providing care, alongside guiding principles to be taken into account when carrying out this duty.
6.The Act also includes a requirement for these same health bodies to follow a real-time staffing assessment and risk escalation process and a staffing methodology, including the use of staffing and professional judgement tools, when determining staffing levels in certain specified healthcare settings. The Act allocates the role of monitoring compliance and the development of the methodology and tools to Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS). The Act makes a number of associated changes to the National Health Service (Scotland) Act 1978 (“the 1978 Act”).
7.The Act also includes a function for SCSWIS to work in collaboration with the care sector to develop and validate appropriate methodologies and tools for care home settings for adults, in the first instance, with powers for Scottish Ministers to require use of such methodologies and tools and to extend the SCSWIS’s function to cover other care settings in the future. The Act makes a number of associated changes to the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010 (“the 2010 Act”).
8.The Act is structured in four Parts:
Part 1 sets out the guiding principles for health and care staffing and sets out duties to have regard to these principles in health care and care services, including in the planning and securing of such services;
Part 2 relates to staffing in the NHS;
Part 3 relates to staffing in care services;
Part 4 contains standard provisions on an ancillary power to make regulations, commencement and short title.