Methodology
As part of the development of the Scottish Social Work Partnership, partners played a central role in shaping the NSWA model. This was reflected in a multi‑staged, collaborative approach to the options appraisal, ensuring COSLA, Social Work Scotland (SWS) and the Office of the Chief Social Work Adviser (OCSWA) were actively involved in scoping and refining the proposed model throughout the process.
The options appraisal process included two stages:
- long-list to shortlist workshop
- multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) of the shortlist
An HMT Green Book approved method, MCDA assesses the performance of options against set criteria, utilising viewpoints and perspectives of stakeholders and decision-makers.
Within the analysis, no comprehensive attempt has been made to estimate the monetary value of benefits for the various options for the National Social Work Agency. This is because the options were not sufficiently different from one another to the extent that they offer materially different benefits to society.
As the options relate primarily to organisational form and governance rather than service delivery, a traditional cost benefit analysis would not meaningfully differentiate between them. It is this factor that drove the use of Multi Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) to examine the relative advantages and disadvantages of the options as a structured way of supporting decision making.