26 August 2026
New report reveals how ‘deeply complex’ local planning and funding landscape is impacting social care in Scotland
CCPS says the findings of the report should “act as a wake-up call to policymakers” that this system is not sustainable and needs urgent reform.
A new fact-finding report commissioned by CCPS has revealed how Scotland’s “complex and fragmented” local strategic planning and funding landscape is impacting CCPS members’ ability to offer high-quality care and support.
As MSPs return to Holyrood next week, CCPS is urging policymakers to recognise that meaningful public service reform cannot be delivered without reforming how social care is funded and commissioned.
Published today, The View From on the Ground provides an overview of how the local planning and funding landscape operates in Scotland, and how it is experienced by social care providers in CCPS’s membership.
In doing so, it highlights how extremely complex this system is, and “how this complexity is having a direct impact on providers’ ability to offer sustainable, person-centred care and support”.
While the report was never intended to directly offer solutions, we hope it will lay the groundwork for a different path forward. As CCPS CEO Rachel Cackett writes in the report’s foreword, it should act “as a wake-up call to policymakers” that this system needs urgent reform, in line with the Scottish Government’s Public Service Reform agenda.
The government has signalled that the reform of public services will be high on its agenda for this term at Holyrood, with Cabinet Secretary Ivan McKee MSP saying this will be “the defining task of our parliament”.
“I hope this report will open a dialogue about what a better planning and funding landscape would look like. Things aren’t working, and CCPS and its members already hold many of the answers to how this system can work differently. We need a seat at the table to redesign this system – and we need this work to start now.”
This report makes clear that Scotland’s social care sector needs reform, and “a key piece in this puzzle will be an overhaul of the planning and funding landscape, and the relationship between the public sector and commissioned providers.”
Mapping out the funding structures of five anonymised CCPS members, the report provides an insight into how providers experience local planning and funding on the ground. It highlights an extremely complex and challenging system to navigate, which one provider likens to “a game of Jenga”.
“I call it a game of Jenga sometimes, when you’ve got a service and it’s funded through all different funding pots […]. That’s our job as senior managers to make it all fit together […]. It’s really exhausting to do that year in year out,” the provider explained.
Provider case studies highlight the huge amounts of organisational capacity going into navigating these complex systems, and a frustration that providers are not being adequately engaged in system redesign: “The third sector are often at the heart of innovation and redesigning services based on the need, the data, the evidence […] So, we’re seen as a strategic partner in those conversations and then we will then be treated as a just a delivery partner at other times.”
By helping policymakers understand the drawbacks of the current landscape, we hope this report will equip them to work with CCPS, its members, and wider partners to redesign a better, more effective and efficient system, which prioritises people’s outcomes.
As a companion piece to the report, an in-depth overview of how governance, planning and funding structures operate can be found here.
CCPS CEO Rachel Cackett said: “With the Scottish Parliament returning from recess next week, we know public service reform will be on many MSPs’ minds.
“I fully recognise that social care needs reform, but it is vital that this is guided by improving people’s health outcomes in the long term, not by short-term cost-cutting measures.
“I hope this report will open a dialogue about what a better planning and funding landscape would look like. Things aren’t working, and CCPS and its members already hold many of the answers to how this system can work differently. We need a seat at the table to redesign this system – and we need this work to start now.”
Read the report The View From on the Ground: CCPS Members’ Views on Governance, Planning and Funding Structures for Social Care at the Local Level
Read the companion piece A fragmented picture of integration: How streamlined are the governance, planning and funding structures for social care at the local level?
For more information, please contact comms@ccpscotland.org.