21 September 2023

4 Steps Guest Blog: “Delaying a pay increase means the people we support, our colleagues and the Scottish Government all lose out”

The First Minister’s pledge of £12 from next April fails to address a deepening crisis, argues Karen Sheridan, Chief Operating Officer of Community Integrated Care and CCPS Board member

Having worked in the social care sector for almost 23 years, I despair that we are still fighting for the recognition the sector deserves. This is a sector that stands tall and proud supporting the those that need it most in society, despite what can only be described as a broken and desperate system. A workforce that turns out no matter what, seemingly still awaiting proper recognition from the Scottish Government in terms of meaningful commitments and action.

While that sounds strong, it is based on constant frustration and desperation as we continue to fight for the rights of our workers who are quite frankly undervalued, underpaid and – despite all our efforts – still not recognised for the complex jobs they hold. Roles that are technically, emotionally, and physically challenging. Roles that demand the best of people to deliver crucial frontline services in our communities. Roles that support and care for people in their most challenging times.

Now don’t be mistaken: by ‘frontline’ I don’t mean just Support Workers, I mean the army of brilliance beside them every day – our leaders, specialists in recruitment and quality, our cleaners and facilities, and many more! Our sector is built on professional and dedicated teams, yet our government continues to deny fair and equitable pay for carers and repeatedly ignores the value of those who stand alongside them to keep our social care services running.

Community Integrated Care’s Unfair To Care report proves that social care is demonstrably undervalued. The publication shows that, in Scotland, despite the government’s commitment to improving social care, we still see significant gaps between Support Worker pay and roles of equivalent size in the NHS and public sector – a staggering 21%, or £4,330 when compared with the NHS Band 3 Worker. This difference is being felt deeply by many during the cost-of-living crisis. It is is not only an injustice for the talented people who deliver an essential service to society, but also for people who draw upon care. Having stable, reliable, relationship-focused support is fundamental to leading a life of independence.

We do not begrudge our health colleagues such a pay scale – we applaud their ability to secure these terms. It’s a good deal which is deserved. However, it would be remiss not to draw the comparison and highlight how the difference in employer seemingly allows a position that diminishes the role of our colleagues in social care, allowing such an injustice in relation to fair and equitable pay for roles which are so stark in their similarities. It would be cynical not to suggest that the structural differences and dispersed nature of our sector makes it easier to ignore our calls in a way that couldn’t with other large statutory organisations.

I have mentioned that our social care workforce is demonstrably technical, accountable, and skilled but it is a point worth mentioning twice. Our sector offers uniquely rewarding vocational experiences for people who are passionate about connecting with others. Sadly, despite this, far too many are finding that social care cannot be a long-term career for them. There is a moral and economic imperative for the government to change this by working directly with the sector, and those who draw on support, to create a workforce plan that ensures social care can become a valued profession. An equitable and fair pay framework must be applied as a priority. Without this equality with partners, we will never achieve the balance needed for a fully-functioning, stable, and sustainable health and social care system.

Our polling with Ipsos illustrates that 91% of the public believes that social care is important to society. Our sector contributes more than £60 billion to the UK every year. The pay gap presents a false economy and moral injustice that can and must be changed. It masks the costs of agency work premiums, the economic impact of families exiting employment to provide care for loved ones, and the resource wasted on managing a constant churn of talent. These figures point to thousands of lives being constrained by low pay or inconsistent and unavailable support.

Our First Minister recently announced in the 2023-24 Programme for Government that social care staff rates of pay would be increased to £12 per hour from April 2024. Was this welcome? Of course. But since that poignant moment of disclosure the announcement seems to be shrouded in some confusion and weeks on, we are still seeking the clarity on what it really meant.

Community Integrated Care supports CCPS 4 Steps Campaign, and we stand with our colleagues across the sector in this call to action. The First Minister’s announcement is welcome, but it fails to address the deepening crisis in the social care sector. Delaying a pay increase undermines staff morale as it simply doesn’t demonstrate value or recognition for the life-changing work they do every day. In short, the delay will only serve to prolong a cost-of-living crisis that would undoubtedly be at a cost to the sector and those who rely on our support as our workforce are forced to look for better paid opportunities just so they can afford to live. Make no mistake: every vacancy represents a life impacted!

Frankly, nobody wins in this scenario – not the people we support, our colleagues or the Scottish Government. We call on the government to listen to the thousands calling for change and do the right thing!

Read more about our 4 Steps to Fair Work campaign

Back

19 September 2023

4 Steps Guest Blog: “Our staff deserve recognition for their drive, passion and commitment”

Immediate action and appropriate funding is needed to ensure children’s social care services can deliver for their workforce as they deliver for Scotland’s children, argues Capability Scotland’s Ben Bradbury

Capability Scotland work with disabled children and their families across Edinburgh, Dundee, Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire in a range of settings including holiday support, community services and residential care. We are committed to delivering outstanding care, support, and opportunities for the young people we work with and key to that is our workforce.

By their nature services for school age children and young people tend to have unusual working patterns. With children attending school during the week the support we offer is, with the exception of school holiday provision, in the evening or at weekends. This presents challenges to recruitment and retention of staff as the hours required of staff to deliver this support do not always sit comfortably alongside raising their own families or maintaining a healthy work life balance. In addition, the qualification and experience levels expected of staff in these services is often higher than in their adult equivalents, for example our day care of children registered managers must be qualified to degree level. There are good reasons for this, indeed we often work with some of the most vulnerable individuals in society, but it adds to the challenge of maintaining appropriate staffing levels of the required skill and competency.

In spite of these challenges our children’s services staff are enthusiastic, creative, playful and without exception go above and beyond to deliver exceptional services for the young people in their care. Whether it be attending training sessions at weekends to fit in with delivery of holiday support or working late on an evening to enable a trip to the cinema to take place we ask a lot of our teams, and they rise to the challenge.

However, since the pandemic an additional challenge has presented itself for organisations such as ours. The pandemic rightfully shone a light on the pay levels for social care staff, the response from the Scottish Government and local authorities has focused entirely on adult social care staff. The government, through the various Health and Social Care Partnerships (HSCPs), has provided additional funds to raise the minimum rate of pay for staff in adult social care roles. These uplifts had the effect of keeping the minimum rate of pay for staff in adult services above the Scottish Living Wage throughout the pandemic and in line with the living wage in 2023.

Unfortunately, no such uplifts have been forthcoming for our children’s services. Unlike with adults, services for children and families tend to be commissioned by the local council rather than the HSCP. There has been no reciprocal offer from the Scottish Government for children’s services, the knock-on effect has been that many of our children’s services have had no universal uplift to the rates paid by local authorities during a period of high wage and price inflation. During this period Capability Scotland has met the cost of increasing wages for children’s service staff in line with their adult service counterparts. However, this state of affairs is not sustainable indefinitely.

If appropriate funding arrangements aren’t arrived at there will be negative consequences on our ability, and the ability of organisations like ours, to continue delivering high quality care and support for disabled children across Scotland. Much has been made of the need to support Fair Work practices across the public sector, as an employer we fully embrace this approach, and we believe our staff deserve recognition for their drive, passion and commitment. As an organisation we welcome the First Minister’s recent statement regarding an uplift to £12 an hour which appears to be inclusive of staff across both adult and children’s services. However, there remains much uncertainty about the timescales and mechanisms by which this will be delivered.

What is needed now is immediate action and appropriate funding to enable us to deliver for our staff as they deliver for Scotland’s children.

Back

18 August 2023

4 Steps Guest Blog: “The staff who work for my son will tell you it’s not only good fun, but they have grown so much from supporting him”

As part of 4 Steps To Fair Work, we’re sharing views from beyond our membership. Here the Coalition of Carers in Scotland’s Jaynie Mitchell discusses how a new approach to recruitment could reap rewards

There is no doubt it is difficult to recruit support staff roles currently. There are many reasons for this, poor wages being one of the main ones, but I also believe that the pandemic and how care is now perceived by wider society is also having a huge impact.

Throughout the pandemic care was primarily reduced to a shrinking number of care workers providing short visits to multiple people at a time. Mainly providing personal care to those who were elderly, unwell, or requiring end of life care. While this type of support is incredibly important it is only part of the social care picture. Many of us have loved ones who are children, teenagers, and young adults, or grown-up children, brothers and sisters who have support needs because of disability.

I would argue that this group of people is often overlooked by the mainstream press whenever there is a news piece on social care. There may be many reasons for this, amongst them how complicated it would be to describe their support needs briefly in an article.

While personal care is an essential element of social care, in reality it’s a very small part of what people need to live the life they want. We need to also focus on how social care should help people to live a rich and full life and not just an existence of being clean, fed and often lonely and bored.

Using the passions and interests of our loved ones to find support is one solution to the workforce crisis. It is also a great model for more personalised care.

Our son is an adventurer who loves to explore new places, going for a run in the car for a hot chocolate. He loves fish and chips followed by an ice-cream. He’s a collector of rare books, so likes to visit charity shops to add to his collection. He is an artist and photographer. He is a whizz when it comes to technology has a wicked sense of humour, and the most infectious laugh. He loves to eat out and enjoys home cooked food too.

When we have advertised for staff in the past and listed his diagnosis, and that sometimes he requires 2:1 support, lovely people apply, but they share none of his interests, they are usually older, very experienced, and come with a notion of what support should look like for someone with complex needs, and that notion doesn’t align with ours.

When we advertise for people that love to drive, are artists and up for a laugh, have a passion for books, are into technology, and enjoying eating out and cooking, we get a completely different kind of applicant. Once we think they are a good fit we then teach them the technical stuff about how to support him.

If your child wants to go to ballet lessons, ask some of the teenagers who attend if they want a part-time job. If they want to go to Beavers, try a Venture Scout. If your husband always enjoyed bowls, ask at their club who could support them. If they want to go to the gym, ask for a gym buddy. If they want to learn to cook, find someone who also wants to learn to support them. If they enjoy live music find someone who likes the same type of gigs. Not only will it be a better experience for your loved one, but a relationship may also grow from it which is and bonus for everyone involved.

We have been conditioned by the system and society that only a particular type of person can support disabled people. It is simply not true. Instead of paying staff a fair wage, staff are called ‘brave’ or ‘kind-hearted’, leading those that don’t see themselves as altruistic to think they need not apply.

Alongside improving the pay and conditions for the health and social care workforce, we also need to change the narrative. The staff who work for my son will tell you that it’s not only rewarding and good fun – but they have learned and grown so much themselves from supporting him.

Jaynie Mitchell is Rural and Island Engagement Worker for the Coalition of Carers in Scotland

Find out more about our 4 Steps to Fair Work campaign

 

 

Back

15 August 2023

4 Steps Guest Blog: “Which part of the elephant do we start with?”

For things to improve for supported people and carers, they first need to improve for the workforce, says Claire Cairns, Director of the Coalition of Carers in Scotland

As Desmond Tutu once wisely said “there is only one way to eat an elephant: a bite at a time.”

I have recently been reminded of this when considering the seemingly enormous task of how to reform and improve social care. It’s certainly stumped a lot of governments, which is why when I talk to my colleagues in other parts of the UK and Europe, they seem equally overwhelmed by the task.

And the social care system is undeniably complicated. There are so many competing demands, so many inter-connected issues, not to mention deeply embedded cultures, processes and structures that we know don’t work, but we can’t work out how to dismantle them. Where do you start? The legs, the trunk?

The Feeley report has given us a great map, or perhaps more of a hopeful brochure of our final destination, if we can ever get the plane off the runway.

So what is the word from unpaid carers on all this? And specifically what is their view on Fair Work?

When it comes to Feeley and the subsequent National Care Service Bill, the development carers are most invested in is the right to breaks from caring. This is something carers have been campaigning about for well over a decade. At the moment, as well as being unpaid, carers don’t have the right to time off from their caring role.

Let that sink in for a minute. Having to care for someone, 24 hours a day, often with a lack of sleep – yet no guarantee that you will be able to get a regular break. Even those carers who do have a decent support package are just coming out of the last two plus years of the pandemic with their batteries, all but depleted and many of the services they used to rely on, seemingly dismantled.

So you might think that the spotlight on Fair Work and improving the terms and conditions of the paid workforce would have carers saying ‘Hang on a minute’. But I think you would be wrong.

Carers know that very little can be achieved to improve social care without first addressing the existing workforce crisis. The right to breaks from caring is completely unworkable unless there are social care staff and services to meet the increased demand. Not to mention to ensure there is a broad range of services available to ensure the very diverse needs of the carer population can be met.

But more than that, carers see the unfairness of how the social care workforce is treated – overworked, underpaid and often unappreciated. Support workers and personal assistants come into peoples’ homes and are trusted with their loved ones. They build relationships with people and at times become like family members. Sometimes and especially over the last few years, they are the only people the family regularly sees, providing a bit of comfort and chat, as well as support.

Carers are often devastated when support staff move on, particularly when it’s because they need to earn more money elsewhere, but they don’t want to move on to a job they will find less rewarding. Then for the family there is the hard task of recruiting, or securing, alternative support from their local authority – yet another stressful thing to add to the list.

The truth is both unpaid carers and social care support staff are the frontline, often working together, both under-appreciated. Both at times hailed as ‘heroes’, when they would rather be recognised and properly recompensed for their essential and highly skilled labour.

Feeley and the National Care Service is rightly focussed on improving outcomes for people who use services and their carers. But for things to improve for supported people and carers, they first need to improve for the workforce.

I suggest that’s the bit of the elephant we need to start with.

The Coalition of Carers in Scotland exists to advance the voice of carers by facilitating carer engagement and bringing carers and local carer organisations together with decision makers at a national and local level.

Since its inception in 1998 the Coalition has played a fundamental role in advancing carer recognition and support and in establishing a Carers Rights agenda in Scotland.

Find out more here. 

Find out more about the 4 Steps to Fair Work campaign here.

 

Back