Children's Services Reform Research: Mapping Integration and Outcomes Across Scotland: A Statistical Analysis

The Scottish Government commitment to introduce a National Care Service in response to the Independent Review of Adult Social Care in Scotland (2021) is the latest development in a process of public service reform intended to improve health and wellbeing outcomes for the Scottish population, with further integration of health and social care services a key element of the proposed reform. The Scottish Government will decide if children’s health and social care services are to be included in the National Care Service, so it is important to understand and learn from how children’s services are currently delivered.

This strand of the Children’s Services Reform Research study mapped the different approaches to integrated delivery of health and social care services across local authority areas in Scotland over the last decade and investigated the relationship between the level of structural integration of children’s services and a range of outcome indicators. For the purposes of this study, we have used the extent to which children’s services have been structurally integrated into each of Scotland’s Health and Social Care Partnerships (HSCPs) as the measure of integration.