The First Minister has acknowledged that legislation to introduce a National Care Service for Scotland should include a requirement on health and social care partnerships to provide care in their own communities for people with highly complex needs.

The plight of around 200 people, a number of whom have been waiting for over three years in inappropriate settings such as hospitals – in some cases outside Scotland – for appropriate care arrangements to put in place for them, was raised in the Holyrood today by Scottish Labour’s mental wellbeing, women's health and sport spokesperson, Carol Mochan.

The Scottish government says health and social care partnerships now have access to a £20m Community Living Change Fund as part of arrangements announced earlier this year to help them redesign services and adopt a preventative and anticipatory approach to supporting people with very complex care needs.

However, Ms Mochan said the figures are “stark and unacceptable” and asked the First Minister to make these people’s cases a priority:

“In the legislation for a National Care Service, will the First Minister commit to introducing a statutory duty to Integration Joint Boards to provide care in the community for people leaving psychiatric hospitals, rather than leaving people in limbo for years and years as has been reported this week?”

Nicola Sturgeon said she would support protecting these patients’ right to the best care for them:

“Obviously the whole parliament has to debate the detail of the legislation to establish the National Care Service, but I think, in principle, that is an important part.

“Nobody, certainly I, does not disagree with how important it is to make sure the people with complex needs have the right care in the community and not have to be in institutional care when that is not necessary or appropriate.

“The challenge here… is that often it is the complexity of the needs of individuals that means that it takes time to ensure that the right provision is available in the community. Sometimes that can mean accommodation that has to be specially designed or commissioned or purpose-built.

“Obviously, there is a real obligation on everybody involved to speed up this process as much as possible but what is really important is that the right provision is in place given the complexity of the needs that individuals have.”

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