Justifying your decision (and asking for specific updates to be provided at the individual’s next review)

When you choose to set a review period you must set out a justification for your decision within the individual’s determination letter.

You should justify the length of the review period with reference to any and all relevant facts that you have taken into consideration.

When setting a review period, you should consider whether there are any specific updates Social Security Scotland might need about the individual at their next review to make a robust determination. Where you have identified specific updates that will be needed, you should set these out t within the review period justification. This will:

• support engagement with CDP scheduled reviews as the person responsible for the CDP award will understand why the review date was selected, and what further information they will need to give us to aid decision making at the next review
• ensure the next case manager understands the reason for your review period decision, and has relevant information about the individual when the review form is returned to support with making the review determination.

You could ask for specific updates about the individual relating to:

• their needs under specific tasks or elements relating to the Care or Mobility Components. For example, information in their application, review form or supporting information might indicate that a change is likely relating to their current level of need under a specific  component or daytime or night-time task by the time their next review takes place.
• new supporting information, only where it will clearly be needed for the next case manager to more fully understand the individual’s level of needs as existing supporting information will be out of date and not of the same value at the time the client’s next review is set for. See ‘The period of time the information relates to’ in the Understanding and interpreting supporting information chapter for more information.

This is not an exhaustive list. There may be other specific updates that are relevant in individual scenarios that you could set out. This should always be approached from a position of:

• supporting the person responsible for the CDP award to engage with the individual’s scheduled review
• ensuring the next case manager is more likely to have the information they need from the individual to make a robust review decision

In some circumstances, asking the for specific updates to be provided about the individual’s needs or circumstances may not be relevant or appropriate. For example, if you are choosing a longer review period, you might be less likely to identify any changes that could occur before the individual’s next review, as their needs might be highly unlikely to change.

It will be for the next case manager to decide whether the information provided with the review form is sufficient to make the scheduled review decision, or whether decision making tools should be used to support with making the determination.