CCPS’ concerns reflected in Finance Committee’s report into preventative spending
Posted on Tuesday 11 January 2011
The Scottish Parliament’s Finance Committee has today published its report into its inquiry into preventative spending.
CCPS’s concerns are referenced within the report, following the oral evidence given to the Finance Committee’s Inquiry in October 2010 by CCPS Convenor Nigel Henderson.
Specifically CCPS raised the issue that Scotland’s public sector is sometimes perceived as designing services for people, rather than with people.
“We hear a lot from local authorities about their duty of care to people. Unfortunately, that often means that we take people into the system, wrap them up and hold on to them and make them dependent. We would far rather that, instead of a duty of care, the mindset was about a duty to promote independent living. That gets us thinking differently—rather than doing things to or for people, we are doing things with people and constantly checking to consider whether we can let go and back off a bit. There is a tendency to make people more dependent on services than they need to be.”
The Finance Committee has recognised this issue as a matter for concern and states within today’s report that there needs to be a radical overhaul of the way that the Scottish public sector is currently organised. It has therefore recommended that the newly established Christie Commission on Public Services consider this matter, amongst others, as part of its forthcoming work.
Separately, the Christie Commission on Public Services has issued a call for evidence, to which CCPS will also be making a strong submission.