Our CEO Rachel Cackett and Board chair Andrea Wood have written to Kate Forbes, Ash Regan and Humza Yousaf, the three candidates competing to be Scotland’s next First Minister and leader of the SNP.

Read the letter here

In the letter the candidates are asked three questions about social care priorities if they become First Minister. The questions are:

• Will you commit to our 4 Steps to Fair Work?

• Will you commit to implement social care reform and meet with us, within your first month in post, to discuss constructive ideas for positive and urgent change?

• How would you articulate your own vision for social care reform in Scotland?

The letter also outlines why a legislative pause could be an opportunity for the new First Minister to look afresh at social care reform based on our model, and to drive forward Fair Work and sustainable funding.

When we receive responses from the candidates, we plan to share them with members and through our public communications channels.

The Coalition of Care and Support Providers in Scotland (CCPS) has appointed Chris Small to the role of Head of Communications and Engagement. CCPS represents more than 90 not-for-profit social care and support providers who deliver vital services to over 220,000 people and their families across Scotland.

Chris joins CCPS from the national charity, Children in Scotland, where he spent seven years as Communications and Marketing Manager. While with Children in Scotland, Chris led on the organisation’s identity review, rebranding project, and the successful 25 Calls campaign, as well as driving communication around the organisation’s policy priorities.

Chris began his career as a production journalist at The Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday, before taking on the role of Communications Manager for the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland. He also held roles with the University of Edinburgh and the Times Educational Supplement Scotland as well as being web editor at the Scottish Parliament.

In his new role with CCPS Chris will support the Chief Executive and CCPS membership on priority areas including the National Care Service and the cost-of-living crisis. He will also manage a team responsible for engagement with the Scottish Parliament and CCPS Public Affairs as well as membership communication and events. This will include collaborating with communications leads across CCPS’s member network to support shared goals on social care reform.

Chris said: “This is an incredibly important time for Scotland’s social care sector, and I am committed to doing all that I can to promote and safeguard the interests of our members who are responsible for such important work. In my new role I will be working with the team at CCPS to enhance and increase our engagement, visibility and collaboration. We have a great team and I am relishing the opportunity of working with them to support our membership in the crucial months ahead.”

Welcoming Chris’s appointment, Rachel Cackett, Chief Executive at CCPS said: “Chris is a highly experienced communications professional, and I am looking forward to working with him on key areas that are critical to Scotland’s social care sector including Fair Work, the reform agenda and the NCS. We have developed a new model for social care in Scotland and with Chris’s help we will ensure that our partners, stakeholders and others can share our vision for a vibrant and sustainable social care sector in the future.”

There is no money: The mantra of the moment.

But clearly that’s not really the case.

Scotland’s resource funding for 2023-24 is almost £42bn[1]. Now, inflationary pressures alone will clearly mean that won’t go as far as £42bn a year ago. And the economic outlook is certainly gloomy. Money is tight for sure; very tight. But when costs are high and budgets under pressure, political allocation decisions show relative value in a stark light.

In this context, the relative value this Scottish Budget places on third sector social care organisations, their staff – and on the people requiring social care and support – is really poor.

In his Budget statement, we heard the Deputy First Minister herald a “formidable pay settlement” for the NHS this year and a 40p per hour uplift for our social care staff next year.

It is therefore no surprise that there is tremendous anger in our sector at this small, comparative uplift in the midst of a recruitment and retention crisis that threatens the critical services we provide to people across Scotland.

Since the Budget was announced though, I have been reflecting on a conundrum.

The Scottish Government clearly takes the responsibilities of staff providing social care and support seriously. These are people who work closely with older people, children and families, disabled people, people with learning disabilities, who are homeless, who are experiencing ill health, including poor mental health, who’ve been through the criminal justice system. And just look at how the government has acted to change the sector over recent years:

Social care and support staff are skilled practitioners who are now required to meet professional qualification requirements.

Social care workers are now professionally regulated. They must abide by Codes of Practice and can be suspended from, or removed from, the register if concerns about their fitness to practise are upheld.

They work in highly regulated services because, of course, it’s important that people using those services receive high quality care from employed staff.

And they are subject to PVG checks because support workers must demonstrate they are suitable to work with people who are vulnerable.

All, in principle, understandable changes in the context of the significant responsibilities held by social care and support staff.

So, here’s the conundrum: The government thinks that frontline social care staff need to be skilled, qualified, professionally regulated and police checked because of the responsible, high-risk nature of the work they do, and yet… they are worth only £10.90 an hour from April. They are worth only what the Living Wage Foundation has set as the minimum amount to ‘get by’.

For me, that’s a balance sheet that just doesn’t add up.

The Scottish Government keeps repeating that social care staff have received a 14.7% pay rise over the last two years.

But that’s a game of walnuts under cups. Let’s clarify a few things.

First of all, percentages very conveniently hide huge disparities in the cash people receive. In April 2020, the basic gross salary funded by the Scottish Government for an adult third sector support worker was £18,135. In the NHS someone doing the equivalent job[2] was on £20,700 (and let’s not even start on the differences in pensions and other benefits).

This year, a third sector support worker salary funded by Scottish Government was £20,475, unlike their NHS equivalent who was awarded £23,914.

Despite a government commitment to Fair Work in Social Care dating back to 2019, the salary gap between equivalent posts has actually increased from 14.1 to 16.8% in the past two years.  In terms of parity, our sector has gone backwards. In fact, a third sector adult social care worker on a basic salary as funded by Scottish Government in 2022 now earns less, in cash terms, than the equivalent NHS worker earned in 2020.

Second, let’s be clear that the Scottish Government has chosen to apply social care uplifts only to those providing registered services to adults. Everyone else, staff in children’s services for example, have had no guaranteed uplift funded from Scottish Government.

And here’s another thing….The much-quoted 14.7% uplift oddly includes a pay rise no-one has even seen in their pay packet yet. In a most unconventional move, the government has chosen to include the recently announced April 2023 pay uplift (again only for adults) in their headline figure for the ‘past two years’[3].

And all these figures for social care staff apply only to those employed by not for profit and independent sector organisations, such as charities who are commissioned to provide public services. They don’t apply to social care staff employed by councils – who do equivalent work. Following the intervention of Scottish Government, local government staff also enjoyed a far higher pay rise this year – from a higher baseline – than their not-for-profit colleagues.

This week we compared the social care support worker starting salaries in a number of jobs advertised by local authorities across Scotland. Almost all were receiving at least £1 more per hour than the £10.50 floor set by Scottish Government for our sector. That’s a very attractive £2,000 difference in annual salary.

Finally, we keep hearing figures from Scottish Government about how much it would cost them to increase salaries for staff in third and independent sector social care organisations. As if those increased wages wouldn’t result in increased tax revenue and spend to offset a good proportion of the additional investment – as the Scottish Women’s Budget Group modelled in their report this week[4].

And as if those increased wages wouldn’t help to ensure services were actually fully staffed to provide the care and support that people right across Scotland need to live independently, stay in work or in school, to be connected and participate in their communities, to be well, to have their human rights respected…  and of course, to stay out of hospital.

Scotland talks a good Fair Work game, but in this budget the Scottish Government makes some pretty stark choices for third sector social care organisations, their staff and the people who rely on social care. These are decisions on costs which do not reflect the value of our staff and the people they work with, and which certainly don’t deliver Fair Work.

The Coalition of Care & Support Providers in Scotland (CCPS), alongside our members, is committed to collaborating with the Scottish Government to deliver on Fair Work for the social care sector. But the threat to our services is real; it is happening now, and we can’t wait any longer.

Even before this winter kicked in, 63% of CCPS members were considering taking emergency measures such as reducing services or handing back contracts. So, we are calling on the government to demonstrate that they really do value third sector social care and support staff. They deserve nothing less – as do the 1 in 20 Scottish people who are likely to need social care support next year.

The costs of not doing so are, quite simply, profound.

So, CCPS is calling on the Scottish Government to take 4 steps to Fair Work now:

1. Immediately implement the updated Real Living Wage (£10.90), backdated to 22 September 2022, as a minimum uplift for ALL social care support staff in the third and independent sectors.
2. From April 2023, implement a Scottish Social Care Living Wage by committing to a 2023-24 social care uplift for all staff, to an hourly rate of at least £12.
3. Pay all uplifts on 100% contract value to ensure employers can invest in all their staff fairly.
4. And publish a three-year timetable in the next Programme for Government to deliver Fair Work in Social Care through parity of pay and key terms & conditions.

We’re not asking for much; we just want a fair settlement for the people providing vital care across Scotland. So, come on Scottish Government let’s get behind the social care sector…now.

Rachel Cackett
CEO
Coalition of Care and Support Providers Scotland
2 February 2023

[1] Budget 2023-24 | Scottish Parliament

[2] Following publication of the Community Integrated Care report, Unfair to Care, we have used AfC Band 3 pay scales as our comparator. Social care salaries have been calculated using a 37.5 hour week.

[3] Meeting of the Parliament: 19/01/2023 | Scottish Parliament Website

[4] Towards-a-transformative-universal-adult-social-care-support-service-for-Scotland.pdf (swbg.org.uk)

In October 2022, Scottish Government announced the Independent Review of Inspection Scrutiny and Regulation (IRISR), to be chaired by Dame Sue Bruce and reporting in June 2023.

The IRISR is looking at how social care services are regulated and inspected across social care support services in Scotland, to ensure a human rights and person-centred approach. It will also consider how regulation and inspection of social care can deliver improved outcomes for people within a regulatory framework that meets the needs of the planned National Care Service (NCS).

Our response was submitted to the Scottish Government via CitizenSpace in December and can be accessed in full here: CCPS IRISR response December 2022

In it, we discuss the importance of investing the time and resource to meaningfully involve supported people in inspection processes. We highlight challenges in the current service registration categories and emphasise the importance of strategic inspection that takes account of the impact of commissioning and procurement approaches on the services our members can provide. We advocate for inspection and scrutiny that is focused on personal outcomes and service improvement, rather than process and compliance. In the challenges of the current context, we note that scrutiny and workforce regulation also need be consistent, realistic and supportive of our member organisations.

URGENT NEWS: CCPS leadership responds to Draft Budget 2023-24

CCPS members met to discuss the draft Scottish Budget on 19 December and expressed both disappointment and anger at the Scottish Government’s lack of recognition or appreciation of the crisis facing third sector social care and support providers. The CCPS Board and CEO have written a letter to the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care requesting an urgent meeting before the Budget Bill is passed. We have highlighted the ongoing lack of parity and respect for our sector and questioned the national commitment to Fair Work. We note to the Scottish Government ministers that, “There simply will not be a sustainable third sector available to deliver your aspirations if you do not act quickly to deal with the issues we face right now”.

The Coalition of Care and Support Providers in Scotland (CCPS) has appointed Dr Simon Webster as the organisation’s new Director of Policy Programmes.

Dr Simon Webster joins CCPS having worked as a Research Consultant on Lord Scott’s Scottish Mental Health Law Review within the Scottish Government’s Mental Health Directorate.

In his new role he will continue the CCPS mission to identify, represent, promote and safeguard the interests of third sector and not-for-profit social care and support providers in Scotland.

With the immediate pressure of winter facing the sector, Dr Webster will lead a team to deliver impactful policy across key areas including sustainability and supporting the CCPS response to the Scottish Government’s National Care Service Bill. He will be working across Scottish Government funded workstreams to improve social care.

Prior to joining CCPS, Dr Webster worked with the Mental Welfare Commission’s investigations team where he was Human Rights Policy Manager. He delivered the Independent Review of Learning Disability and Autism in the Mental Health Act, as Secretary to the Review and as an executive member.

He has extensive experience of working to improve conditions for children and young people through his role as CEO of Your Voice, an innovative independent advocacy service, which he led for over a decade.

At CCPS he will be working with members of the Coalition who collectively support more than a quarter of a million people every year.

Welcoming Dr Webster’s appointment, Rachel Cackett, Chief Executive at CCPS said: “This is a hugely significant appointment for CCPS and I’m thrilled to welcome Simon to join our management team.

“Simon is a highly successful and creative policy professional with expertise in social care and support, and the delivery of human rights. I’m looking forward to working with him and all the team at this defining moment for social care as, on behalf of our 91 member organisations, we work to influence Scotland’s reform agenda and drive the change that is required to respond to the urgent winter pressures the sector is facing and to deliver on the Fair Work agenda.”

Dr Simon Webster said: “This is an exciting and challenging time to be joining the team at CCPS. I am delighted to be part of an organisation that is so clearly focused on its membership and how they deliver social care services to a wide range of people across Scotland.”

With significant cost and demand pressures facing third sector providers of social care and support, CCPS undertook a snapshot survey of members in early September.  Rachel Cackett, CCPS CEO said, “The situation is grave as providers – and the people they are supporting – face a perfect storm over the coming months. In the few weeks since we asked our members to tell us about the pressures they are under, the economic situation has become significantly worse. We have shared our key findings with the Scottish Parliament’s Health, Social Care and Sport Committee as they undertake their own discussions on winter pressures for the sector.  CCPS continues to be ready to discuss practical measures that will support the sustainability of the sector for everyone who needs care and support.”

Rachel Cackett

Chief Executive Officer

Read the CCPS Briefing for the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee: Winter Pressures in Social Care

Rachel Cackett, CEO of the Coalition of Care and Support Providers in Scotland said: “CCPS recognises the importance of an immediate increase to the Real Living Wage, which addresses the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on the lowest paid. It comes not a moment too soon.

“But this announcement will mean that the lowest paid Scottish social care staff – who provide essential care and support in our families and local communities – will now be earning less than the Living Wage Foundation calculates is needed to make ends meet.  These are staff working with older people, disabled people, children, families and others who need support.

“Local government social care contracts for third sector providers of adult social are currently based on the lowest paid frontline staff taking home 10.50ph – 40p per hour less than the new Real Living Wage minimum that comes into place today.  That’s not far off an £800 hole in a full-time worker’s pocket each year.  Providers offering services to children, for example, don’t even have that guarantee.

“The Scottish Government’s recent increase to a minimum hourly rate of £10.50 for social care staff kept key workers’ pay just above the previous living wage baseline – and rightly so.  Keeping the same difference between the new Real Living Wage of £10.90 and the basic pay of a frontline care and support worker would mean increasing their hourly rate to £11.55 – with a knock-on effect on pay increases for all social care staff.

“Put today’s announcement alongside recent pay and benefits offers for health and social care staff in councils and the NHS, which outstrip anything on offer to people working in the third sector, and the situation is deeply concerning. Without the resources to match these sorts of increases, third sector organisations will seriously struggle to meet the needs of those who will be impacted the most by the current cost-of-living crisis.

“As the financial pressures really start to mount over the winter, and people need the care and support of our third sector even more, we simply can’t afford to see our brightest and best staff vote with their feet.  They have families to feed and houses to heat too.

“Today, CCPS calls on the Scottish Government to hold to its commitments to Fair Work and a sustainable social care sector by, as a first step, committing to funding that will allow service contracts to reflect equity in uplifts this year for all staff working in third sector social care organisations.”