Social Security Scotland - Pledge

Social Security Scotland is an Executive Agency of the Scottish Government. We administer benefits on behalf of the Scottish Government. These benefits will be introduced in stages. Once all of these have been introduced, we will be delivering benefits for families on low incomes, people who need help paying for a funeral, disabled people, carers, young people entering the workplace and to help people heat their homes. We will administer the new Scottish social security system in a positive and supportive way, based on the fact that social security is a human right. The Scottish Government is building this new benefit system with the people who will use it. Social Security Scotland is working to make sure that our people, places and processes are able to meet these people’s needs. This will help to make sure that the service we deliver is inclusive, accessible, clear and straightforward to interact with. This will also make sure that when people do interact with us that they are treated with dignity, fairness and respect. Part of this work is making sure that we are aware of how trauma in someone’s life can impact on their experience when interacting with others – including public services. This understanding will enable us to recognise when this could be creating barriers for people and where we need to adapt to make sure they have a positive experience. We will include trauma awareness and learning materials in our induction and training and we will talk to colleagues about this on a regular basis to keep it front and centre in our thinking. We will look for colleagues to identify how they are building this into their day to day work. This will apply equally to how we treat our colleagues, stakeholders and our clients. This is all part of our commitment to the Public Leadership Pledge of Support. We have a unique opportunity as a new public service being built from scratch and we will make sure that this is part of what we do from the outset.