Commentary on Sections Part 1 – Guiding Principles for Staffing Section 1 – Guiding principles for health and care staffing
9.Section 1 sets out guiding principles for the provision of health and care staffing, specifically that the primary purposes of staffing for health and care services are to provide safe and high-quality services; and to ensure the best health care outcomes for service users, while also meeting, in so far as consistent with those primary purposes, the principles set out in subsection (1)(b).
10.The multi-disciplinary nature of health services and care services is acknowledged in subsection (1)(b)(viii), which sets out that staffing for health and care services are to promote multi-disciplinary services as appropriate, with subsection (2) defining ‘multi-disciplinary services’ as health care or care services delivered together by individuals from such a range of professional disciplines as necessary in order to meet the needs of, and improve standards and outcomes for, service users.
11.Subsection (2) also defines certain terms used in Part 1 of the Act. A care service is a service mentioned in section 47(1) of the 2010 Act – that Act constitutes the main legislation governing such services, whose providers are required to register with SCSWIS. Therefore all registered providers of care services will have to have regard to the staffing principles in delivering their service, even where no specified staffing tools and methodologies are in place for their particular kind of care service.