POLICY: Health and Care (Staffing) (Scotland) Act 2019 Statutory Guidance

Statutory guidance on legislation supports those who must implement the law to make sure they do what it says. For the Health and Care (Staffing) (Scotland) Act 2019 this includes Health Boards, Local Authorities, Integration Authorities, and care service providers. The proper implementation of the Act is critical to the provision of safe staffing across health and care services in Scotland, especially in nursing. This is the RCN response to the Scottish Government’s 2023 public consultation on the draft guidance.

We had extensive engagement, as a key stakeholder, with Scottish Government on the draft guidance, prior to the public consultation. That meant that most of our comments had already been addressed. We streamlined the remainder and used the consultation to restate them. This was informed by three RCN member engagement events which provided input that was invaluable to our submission. We highlight issues to do with:

• staff training
• the role of Integration Authorities
• the status of nursing students
• the application of the Act’s guiding principles to the duties in the Act
• calculating agency costs
• reporting
• defining risk
• the status of bank staff
• outcome measures and indicators, and 
• terminology.