Shirley-Anne Somerville details progress made in creating Scotland's new social security system
While the pandemic continues to have an impact on our operations and our delivery partners – particularly those working in health and social care and the Department for Work and Pensions - we are continuing to progress policy, design and development work in social security and the development of disability benefits.
We are still discussing with those partners what the impacts of Covid-19 mean for our delivery timeline. However work on what people can expect from that service has continued and I am keen to give people a better understanding of what to expect from our new approach to accessing disability benefits - right through from application to appeal.
We want to illustrate how we will be doing things differently and delivering a service built on the principles of dignity, fairness and respect and so have done this through a series of papers giving more detail on our approach.
Our new policy position papers highlight how people will be able to access disability assistance in the way that is best for them – be that using a paper form, phoning us, filling in an application online or with assistance from one of our staff based in local communities.
We set out how the forms have been tested with members of the public to make sure they are clear and easy to understand and navigate.
We talk about the way that we will make decisions. We will gather as much information as we can through the application, and help people to get the information we may need from other public bodies and health care providers. We will also consider information from informal sources including family or friends who may be able to articulate better than anyone how a disability or health condition impacts on someone’s day to day life. We will aim to make decisions as much as possible using this information.
If we can’t, we’ll seek advice from health and social care professionals that we will employ. There will be no private sector involvement in the way we make decisions.
Only when it is absolutely essential, we may need to ask someone to take part in a consultation as part of their application process for Adult Disability Payment. A consultation is a conversation - a conversation based on trust in our clients. We can do this by phone or face to face in a community setting, whatever the person prefers.
We will never ask someone to undertake a DWP style assessment. We will never expect them to undertake tasks to show us how their disability or condition impacts on them. We will not do this as we know that conditions impact people in different ways and it can vary day to day. We will never put them through the stressful invasive process people have told us the DWP assessment causes.
This should be something we all care about. Now more than ever we can all agree that we don’t know what the future can hold. Any of us could find that we or a loved one experience a disability or a health condition. In the same way that we expect the NHS to be there to give health and medical support, we should all expect that if a disability or health condition has an impact on our day to day lives and ability to move around resulting in loss of income or the additional costs – that a social security system will be there for us too.
I want people to have confidence that this system is there, that they are able to easily access it and that it will treat them well. We want people to feel proud of this system and to know that it will work well for everyone. If we get this right, this will be a service that we can all be truly proud of.
Shirley-Anne Somerville MSP is Cabinet Secretary for Social Security and Older People
