This Scorecard shows how well Scotland’s care policies support the people who give and receive care, highlighting strengths, gaps and the changes needed for a fairer future.
This online platform summarises the Scorecard findings. To explore the complete findings, scoring framework and methodology in more detail, you can read the full report via the link below.
How Scotland is performing across key criteria
Across all five assessment themes, Scotland’s care policy environment shows early stage to developing progress. Policies exist in many areas, but delivery is inconsistent, access varies widely and progress remains uneven across the system. Significant gaps persist in funding, monitoring, data and implementation.
The scores below show how Scotland is performing across the core criteria that make up the Care Policy Scorecard.
Explore the care system
The Care Policy Scorecard is organised into five Dimensions. Together, they demonstrate how well Scotland supports the people who provide and rely on care.
Explore each Dimension to understand the policies, progress and challenges that shape the wider care landscape.
1. Care Services
Care services include early learning and childcare, and adult social care. These services support people throughout life, enabling children to thrive and adults to live independently and with dignity.
2 policy areas View dimension +2. Unpaid Care
Whether caring for children, parents, partners or friends, Scotland relies on unpaid care to keep society and the economy moving. Unpaid carers provide essential support, often at significant personal cost. The majority of unpaid carers are women. This creates a gendered pattern of financial insecurity, reduced employment opportunities and poorer health outcomes for many women in Scotland.
3 policy areas View dimension +3. Paid Care
Paid care workers deliver essential support across childcare and social care services. These roles are critical to Scotland’s wellbeing and to the functioning of the wider care system. The paid care workforce is overwhelmingly female, which means any weaknesses in job quality, pay or working conditions have a direct and disproportionate impact on women.
4 policy areas View dimension +4. Care-Supporting Infrastructure
The original global Care Policy Scorecard focuses on infrastructure that is especially relevant to low-income countries, such as access to piped water or household electricity, both of which offer significant labour savings for households. These areas are of less relevance in Scotland. The Care Policy Scorecard for Scotland therefore focused on two areas of care-supporting infrastructure relevant to the Scottish context: access to energy efficiency schemes, and transport. The scorecard assessment explores how policies in these two areas support care giving by both paid and unpaid carers in Scotland
2 policy areas View dimension +5. Cross-Cutting Services
Cross cutting services refer to the systems, data and measurement frameworks that help governments understand and value care. These tools support effective policy design, resource allocation and long-term planning. In Scotland, there is no policy at either the UK or Scotland level that mandates the regular collection of time-use data. These gaps limit the visibility of unpaid care and the ability to assess progress toward more equitable outcomes.
1 policy areas View dimension +