Page 38 - Unfair-To-Care-22-23-Flipbook

WHERE THERE’S POLITICAL WILL, THERE’S A WAY.
PUT HUMAN RIGHTS AT THE HEART OF SERVICES AND FRAME SOCIAL CARE AS AN INVESTMENT IN, RATHER THAN A COST TO, SOCIETY.
SECTION 5: THE IMPACT
Devolution has, no doubt, influenced how social care has evolved over the past 25 years in Scotland where Community Integrated Care supports 300 people and employs around 1,000 colleagues. The Scottish Parliament has arguably demonstrated a more consistent commitment to improving social care. This has manifested itself in a sector which
is broadly better funded, has a workforce that is paid the Real Living Wage as a legal minimum and is both regulated and required to register in order to practice.
The impact of this is an environment in which, to some extent, providers are able to better operate and more readily recruit frontline workers. However, that’s not to say the problem is fixed. These advantages however, have not cured the workforce challenges for the Scottish sector, with a 43% vacancy rate in 202040. Despite being much further along a road that Westminster
has yet to set foot on, Scotland is still competing with hospitality, retail, and the NHS when it comes to pay.
In September 2020, the Scottish Parliament commissioned a thorough review of social care in Scotland, which questioned the effectiveness of local authorities’ commissioning practices, how people-focused
those practices were, and the level of consistency of social care provision across the country.
Chaired by Holyrood’s former Director General for Health and Social Care and Chief Executive of NHS Scotland, Derek Feeley, the review was tasked with recommending improvements to Scottish social care. Importantly, it took
a human rights approach and focused on the outcomes achieved by and with people who use services, their carers and families, and those working in adult social care.
As a result, the Scottish Government has proposed the creation of a new National Care Service (NCS), which has expressed an intention to put human rights at the heart of services and frame social care as an investment in, rather than a cost to, society. The Bill is a long way from being implemented, but it demonstrates that government action can be taken in a sector that has
so often been kicked into the political long-grass.
40. https://www.gov.scot/publications/national-care-service-adult-social-care-workforce-scotland/ 38