The Level

When life gets complicated, people need more than one kind of help.

A safe home. Support with mental health or recovery. Help with money. Protection from harm. A fair chance with the justice system. But services meant to help are often disconnected – working in separate silos. People cannot unpack their crises one by one. They get passed from door to door – or fall through the gaps entirely. For people whose lives have been shaped by poverty, trauma and inequality, this is not rare. It is routine. 

When we get it right for people at the hard edges of services, we raise the floor for everyone.

The Level: explained

The Level is Scotland’s Delivery Protocol to make No Wrong Door real for people at the hard edges of severe and multiple disadvantage. It sets a national floor, gives every part of the system shared tools to meet it, and shows the system change needed to remove those edges.

The Level has two connected parts:

1. Raising The Floor: what each role can do
Four Foundations set the national minimum standard. Role specific Level Checks help three groups put that standard into practice: practitioners and providers; funders and commissioners; policymakers. This is what each part of the system can do from its own position.

2. No Wrong Door: system change at the hard edges
The conditions those roles need: a whole system response, leadership and accountability, impact assessment and a shared outcomes framework. This is for working together – in local planning and partnership groups, learning sets and cross policy discussions.

Choose how you want to explore The Level:

Evidence and Learning

The Level is built on what we already know: the scale of severe and multiple disadvantage in Scotland, the gendered nature of it, the cost of a fragmented response, learning from a test-of-change – and what people with lived experience say would make the system work.