Care services should be designed to fit the needs of people, rather than forcing people to adapt to them, according to the head of the Care Commission.

Stephen Naysmith and Lucy Adams

Care services should be designed to fit the needs of people, rather than forcing people to adapt to them, according to the head of the Care Commission.

The commission is holding a forum - Dignity in Care - in Glasgow today, at which chief executive Jacquie Roberts will argue that a one-size-fits-all approach is not good enough. Elderly people, young people, sufferers of mental health problems and others in receipt of care services should not be "passive" but should insist on what they are entitled to.

"It is far too easy for people who are in difficult circumstances to receive care passively and think they have to fit themselves into care," she said. "But care should be delivered according to your requirements and needs.

Too often people are grateful and fit in."

Ms Roberts told The Herald that delivering care did not just mean taking charge of people and looking after them.

"It also means treating them with esteem, value and regard," she said. "We want to make sure that side of the coin is heightened."

The forum, supported by the Scottish Human Rights Commission and the Equality and Human Rights commission in Scotland, will highlight the importance of a rights-based approach to the regulation of care services, and promote the national care standards which provide a benchmark of quality.

Ms Roberts said that one goal was to inform consumers so they can demand such standards are met.

She said: "It is not about putting the onus on them, but, by raising awareness of the rights and standards, people are aware of what they should be getting and whom to complain to if they are unhappy.

"The more people know about care standards the more we will be able to do our job effectively."

The Care Commission was among the agencies criticised in a recent BBC Panorama programme about the provision of care at home for the elderly in South Lanarkshire by a private firm contracted by the council.

Ms Roberts said the programme had been helpful in publicising the care standards. However, she described the quality of such services in Scotland as "patchy" and added "There are problems - not just in the private sector but the public sector, too. There has been a significant change to the intensity of the work with complex care packages now being delivered at home.

"We know we have to concentrate on the care at home workforce," she said.

The forum will also include the launch of Meet Sid, a campaign and website aimed at promoting care standards to young people in an accessible way. "The standards are not young people friendly and we thought they might not identify with a booklet," Ms Roberts said.

The campaign features the diaries of an alien, to highlight the culture shock young people feel on entering local authority care. Ms Roberts argues such work might help prevent future abuses, such as those which took place in Glasgow's Kerelaw residential school and secure unit.

"If the young people at Kerelaw had felt more empowered 10 or 20 years ago, they might have been able to speak more freely and had these issues investigated."

She also welcomed the involvement of rights bodies in the debate, adding: "Dignity is particularly important when you are talking about care, especially for older people with dementia, those with multiple disabilities and children and young people."

Professor Alan Miller, chairman of the Scottish Human Rights Commission, said of the event: "The whole purpose is to raise standards of care and look at ways that can be done. There are some areas where practitioners would benefit from being more aware of best practice in relation to areas like physical restraint.

"One of the areas we are going to look at is public procurement and the ways and means in which human rights standards can be more integrated into the public procurement process rather than it just being based on value for money.

"Private companies are not necessarily covered by the human rights act but public authorities are, so we are looking at ways to ensure it is part of the tendering and contractual process."