This Briefing summarises a number of current consultation documents which share a common objective of improving care in Scotland's communities - clearly not just an objective which the churches would share but one in which we are key partners. Further details on all these papers are available from SCPO.

1. "Better Care for All our Futures"

In her foreword to this document, Susan Deacon declares its aim to "work together for a healthy, caring Scotland". It sets out the Executive's proposals to legislate on a number of key issues. While the broad areas of legislation have been widely consulted on, the specifics have not and it is these specific areas which are set out in this paper, in the context of the Executive's priorities on long term care.

The legislative proposals are:
(a) Joint resourcing and management of community care services. This will amend the Social Work (Scotland) act to enable health bodies to pay local authorities for things, enable local authorities to pay health bodies for things, and enable NHS bodies and local authorities to enter into joint arrangements to pool functions, carry out functions for each other, or enter into joint capital investment projects (for example to provide joint accommodation). The Executive are also legislating to give themselves the power to force joint arrangements, which they will apparently only use in cases where local partners have no strategy to develop joint working. The aim of these proposals is to remove artificial barriers between community care providers.
(b) Promoting consistency in charging for non-residential care. The Executive will legislate to give itself powers to issue mandatory guidance on charging for non residential care and will use these powers to enforce a greater consistency of approach. They propose to refrain from exerting these powers until COSLA's work in this area is evaluated. The Executive are considering proposals to extend this power to local authority-provided housing support services provided under "Supporting People".
(c) To enable local authorities to enter into deferred payment agreements with eligible residents through charges on property, and to provide a regulatory power to give people a right to fund their residential care charges in this way. (In other words, to allow people to give local authorities a right to take charges from their estate rather than being forced to sell their home in order to enter care.)
(d) To allow people to make additional payments so that they can enter more expensive care than that which a local authority would pay for ordinarily for such a person.
(e) To promote more widespread take-up of direct payments to allow people to take more ownership of their care arrangements. At the moment there are no mental health service users or ethnic minority persons using the direct payments scheme. The Executive propose to extend the group eligible for direct payment to people who need services because of frailty or age and essentially to anyone who is in need of community care services, and to make it a duty for local authorities to offer direct payments as an alternative to making payments themselves. The document particularly requests comments on this area of the proposals. The Executive want direct payments to be able to be used to purchase local authority services. They also want to extend the scheme to people who have an attorney or guardian, particularly given the safeguards for people with such an attorney under the Adults with Incapacity Bill. Provision will also be made for disabled parents to purchase children's services. Comment is also asked for in this area, particularly on what safeguards should be in place to protect children in these circumstances.