The Scottish Government’s commitment to significantly improving terms and conditions for support staff welcome – detail now important

Responding to today’s announcement by the Scottish Government about the creation of a new voluntary social care bargaining forum to help improve pay and conditions for social care workers, CCPS’s CEO Rachel Cackett said:

“This is an important pre-election public commitment from the Scottish Government to establish a means to bargain for better terms and conditions for care and support staff in commissioned services for adults and children in advance of the 2027-28 Scottish Budget – a commitment we hope will be shared by whoever forms a new government in May.

We welcome the Minister’s clear statement that social care workers ‘provide essential, skilled support to the people we love, often in demanding and emotionally challenging circumstances’, and that they ‘deserve pay and conditions that reflect that’. At CCPS, we couldn’t agree more and we are pleased our members’ concerns about fairness in pay have been heard.

Sectoral bargaining, if done well, has the potential to finally lever the delivery of Fair Work. The urgency of achieving this is clear to anyone who needs, or works in, social care in Scotland. Because of this, we have been involved in negotiating a new approach for some time with government, union colleagues and our partners at Scottish Care. Following today’s announcement, we look forward to finalising a settlement with government that we, like our partners, can take back to our members to consider, and which new ministers can support.

The announcement of additional immediate funds to relieve some of the financial pressures faced by support staff is also positive and we look forward to seeing the detail of the government’s commitments here, including: how much investment is available to meet the commitment in full across all adult and children’s commissioned services and how it will flow through to providers to support their staff at pace.

As always, we are ready to work with current and future ministers, and their officials, to ensure commitments can realise significant benefits and that the many additional pressures facing providers, their staff and supported people can be prioritised so that all can flourish.”