By Ann Pike, Chair of COSLA's Non-Residential Care Charging - Lived Experience Group

In November 2025, the Scottish Women’s Budget Group and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation co-published “Time to end Social Care Charging in Scotland (Charging Report)”. The report highlighted the impact of charging on disabled people and called on the Scottish Government to fulfil the commitment it made in 2021 to work with COSLA to identify options for the removal of non-residential care charges. As that commitment has not been realised, COSLA has focused on the report’s recommendations to councils to:

• make social care charging fairer,
• increase consistency across councils, and
• improve transparency, evidence and engagement.

COSLA’s Non-Residential Care Charging – Lived Experience Group was established to bring together representatives from organisations that represent people with lived experience and interested individuals. It will work alongside COSLA’s Non-Residential Care Charging Group (Charging Group), made up of colleagues from councils, Health and Social Care Partnerships (HSCP) and other partner organisations.

COSLA publishes annual Non-residential care charging guidance which councils use to develop local charging policies. The Charging Group are responsible for making recommendations to the guidance, which is then signed off by COSLA’s Health & Social Care Board before publication. The Lived Experience Group will ensure that the development, review and implementation of the guidance is shaped by the direct experiences of people who draw on social care support, unpaid carers and others affected by charging decisions.

For the past four years I have been the unpaid carer representative on COSLA’s Health & Social Care Board. Attending board meetings has enabled me to engage with elected members from across Scotland and to understand the challenges and difficult decisions they face to ensure council services can continue operating. It has also provided me with the opportunity to raise the challenges that unpaid carers, and the people they care for, face every day. So, when I was asked to chair COSLA’s Non-Residential Care Charging – Lived Experience Group, I was delighted to accept, because charging remains a significant issue for people using services, their unpaid carers and families.

At the Lived Experience Group’s first meeting, members shared what non-residential care charging means in practice, focusing on its effect on people’s income, wellbeing, dignity, choice and control. They described a system that can be inconsistent, intrusive and extremely difficult to navigate.

Social care aims to enable people to live independently, make choices and participate in their communities. However, carers’ organisations across Scotland regularly hear that, for people charged for support at home or in the community, the cost of that care can create a barrier to securing the very independence it seeks to protect.

By focusing on the Charging Report’s recommendations, COSLA’s Charging and Lived Experience Groups hope to identify alternative approaches to charging that:

• make the process simpler for people using services and their carers,
• are more consistent across Scotland,
• are less resource driven for councils, and
• draw on existing examples of good practice across councils

As we move into a period of significant upheaval and change across public services, now more than ever we need to focus on reducing complexity and ensuring we have joined up, efficient services. By doing this we can work towards a preventative agenda.

As Chair of the Lived Experience Group, I urge all partners to recognise the importance of this opportunity and work together to deliver a simpler, more consistent, equal and fair approach to social care charging across Scotland. This must be more than an exercise in reviewing processes or improving administration. It must be about understanding the real impact charging has on people's lives and ensuring that the voices of those affected shape the decisions we make. People should not have to face financial barriers to accessing the support they need to live independently and participate in their communities. The measure of our success will be whether we can turn what we hear into meaningful change for the people who matter most – those who use and rely on social care.