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

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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.

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11 September 2023

4 Steps Guest Blog: “On pay for social care staff, I see only despair and anger”

Last week the First Minister announced plans for a rise in baseline pay for social care staff to £12. Where does this leave supervisory staff – and who will recognise their skills? asks Stephen McLellan, Chief Executive of Recovery Across Mental Health

I want to refer to a couple of conversations I have had with colleagues recently to help put the context of developing a career in social care into some perspective.  I shall be retiring shortly, after 47 years in Health and Social Care, so I feel I have some background in this.

Few people will have heard of RAMH – Recovery Across Mental Health, as we are a local organisation, operating mainly in Renfrewshire, East Renfrewshire, North Ayrshire and Argyll and Bute. However, we probably reflect the reality of many third sector organisations in Scotland: local delivery by local people to meet local needs.

We employ around 180 staff, 50 volunteers and support over 5,000 people every year.

The first comment by a colleague pretty much sums up the description above:

“We just do it. We turn up and we don’t give up.’’

This very simple description defines what society requires from care, support and health workers. We expect services when and where we need them, no questions asked, because that’s the right thing to do, isn’t it?

To rhetorically answer my own question, yes it is. But how can we continue to expect this if we are not able to acknowledge the value of what we ask?

We expect people to work at the barest minimum rate of pay, with a token nod towards pensions. We put people in stressful, challenging and often demanding situations and offer them £10.90 an hour.  Colleagues who provide supervision and management are expected to do this at rates that are in relation to colleagues in health, paltry.

This takes me onto the conversation with another colleague, yesterday.  She has been offered and is taking a job as a Social Work Assistant, in a local authority. She doesn’t want to leave, but the increase in salary and the security of a pension leaves her little choice. As she explained, “You guys gave me training and experience that meant I was able to apply for this job. I feel awful, but I can’t turn down the money’’.

I will not disagree with colleagues in statutory organisations who argue for better terms and payment. Good luck to them. However, I cannot understand what value there is in governments not understanding that every time health colleagues receive an increase, it only widens the gap for social care staff, which in turn encourages more people to leave and discourages new entrants.

The First Minister recently announced the 2023-24 ‘Programme for Government’. He noted the potential for a baseline payment of £12 an hour, perhaps from April 2024? I refer back to my comments above: where does this leave supervisory staff? Who will recognise their skills and their needs?

There is no moral, or fiscal argument that justifies this myopic policy. It is purely a short term, transactional arrangement that is creating despair and anger across a huge swathe of the voting population.

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5 September 2023

Media statement: Programme for Government social care pay announcement “fails to grasp reality and begs questions over timeline”

Our CEO Rachel Cackett responds to today’s pledge from the First Minister

Responding to today’s Programme for Government announcement, the Coalition of Care and Support Providers’ Chief Executive Rachel Cackett said:

“We welcome the fact that the Scottish Government has recognised the issue of fair pay for social care staff.

“However, today’s announcement represents a failure to grasp the reality of what’s happening in social care in Scotland. It falls way short of what is required and what we’ve called for through our 4 Steps campaign.

“Social care staff needed an immediate pay increase, backdated to April of this year, as a first step in bringing them security – and giving a sense of consistency for the people they support.

“Any further delay will heap pressure on the workforce and services during a prolonged cost of living crisis and through another extremely challenging winter period.

“We’ve called for pay uplifts to be applied to staff in all services, not just those in registered adult social care, and we’ve urged government to deliver funding packages that value the vital role of support staff and managers, alongside frontline workers.

“Anything less than this contributes to distortion in the sector, undermines staff morale and, again, impacts on the quality of relationships and consistency of support for the people in our communities who most need it.

“We are confused by the disparity between the content of the First Minister’s statement at Holyrood and the detail of 2023-24 policy priorities outlined in the letter to the Cabinet Secretary for NHS Recovery, Health and Social Care, also published this afternoon.

“In the former, a pay uplift to £12 per hour was expressed as a firm commitment. In the latter, an increase ‘up to £12 per hour’ for adult social care is described as an option to be evaluated. Which is it?

“As a matter of priority, the government must confirm the commitment to a pay uplift with an absolutely definitive timeline, and no backtracking.

“We will be seeking more detail and pushing for clarification about the introduction of the £12 pay uplift, which the First Minister announced 136 days ago.

“We will continue to collaborate with Scottish Government to ensure that fair work can be delivered for social care staff – and we will continue to work to ensure that our campaign calls are answered.”

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7 July 2023

4 Steps Guest Blog: “It’s too easy to think that social care is about someone else. It’s about all of us”

Providers must have better resourcing to reflect the societal importance of our work in communities across Scotland, says Andrew Thomson, Deputy CEO of Carr Gomm

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others“.

George Orwell’s fusion of political and artistic purpose was always intended to have a wider application than simple political satire. Social care in Scotland can often feel ripe for satire, although there is nothing funny about systematic underappreciation and underfunding.

Inelegant tension exists throughout, and remains inexplicably embedded in, our system. The maxim from improvement science states that “every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets”, and we have a system that Derek Feeley describes as containing “unwarranted local variation, crisis intervention, a focus on inputs, a reliance on the market, and an undervalued workforce”.

Scottish Government policy sets the minimum adult social care wage. The Scottish Government and CoSLA decide the financial uplifts to cover the costs of the policy. Social care providers implement the policy and volubly articulate again the wider implications, failings, and consequences of the policy. We’ll do it all again next time too. Our system is designed to aggregate the underfunding and to ignore the cost-of-living crisis; we get poorer each time we go around. There is no sign of the powerful recognising that the social care system is increasingly unsustainable.

The Scottish Government has set the wage at £10.90/hr, or 104% of the statutory minimum wage. The Scottish Government sets the value of working in our sector. Practitioners working for local authorities or the NHS are excluded from the Government’s policy and are paid more than 20% more for undertaking equal work. All practitioners are equal, but…

It feels like a lifetime ago that we clapped our hands on a Thursday night in acknowledgement of the essential work undertaken by key workers as Covid ravaged our lives and freedoms. We recognised the importance in society of those that care for others. It is too easy to think that social care is about someone else, but social care is relevant to our colleagues, our friends and families, our neighbours. Ourselves.

Every one of us has the right to live a full life. And every one of us should have the right to be supported by a practitioner that has been comprehensively inducted, continually developed, registered with a professional body, professionally qualified, scrutinised by an external regulator, and appropriately remunerated. We have all of the former, we simply need to recognise – as Feeley already has – the latter: that our workforce is undervalued.

As a first step, the First Minister has committed to raising the wages of frontline adult social care professionals to £12/hr. It’s a small step on the road towards appropriate remuneration, although thus far, the Scottish Government has not published a timeline and so we wait. I call on the First Minister to implement this improvement from 1 April 2023.

The oft-quoted, lazy narrative about social care is that it is broken. But Carr Gomm is not broken. The people we support are not broken. We simply need better resourcing to adequately reflect the societal importance of our essential work in communities throughout Scotland.

Andrew Thomson is Deputy Chief Executive of Carr Gomm, a leading social care and community development that supports over 3000 people a week across Scotland.

Find out more about our 4 Steps to Fair Work campaign and get involved.

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29 June 2023

News: 4 Steps to Fair Work campaign launched to bring step change in social care

New CCPS campaign amplifies voices of sector and civic society, urging the Scottish Government to pledge to invest and give hope of equality

The Coalition of Care and Support Providers in Scotland today launches a national campaign calling on the Scottish Government to deliver Fair Work for Scotland’s not-for-profit social care staff.

The campaign draws on evidence from CCPS’s membership organisations about the acute pressures currently being faced by their services as a result of the Scottish Government’s base pay rate for staff of £10.90, which is leading to staff leaving the workforce and many services being jeopardised.

The initiative aims to influence Scottish Government to take 4 Steps to Fair Work for social care staff and announce a timetable for investment. The 4 Steps are:

1. Deal with pay inequality: As a first step, implement the promise of a minimum of £12 per hour for social care staff, starting from 1 April 2023.

2. Ensure equal pay for equal work: Apply pay uplifts to staff in all services, not just those in registered adult social care.

3. Value all staff who play their part: Deliver funding packages that value the crucial role of support staff and managers, alongside frontline workers.

4. Give us hope of equality: Publish a timetable by this September to deliver fully on Fair Work in Social Care by 2025.

Launching the campaign, CCPS’s Chief Executive Rachel Cackett said:

“We may not always ‘see’ it, but social care and support is a fundamental; it touches all of us at points through our lives. But it mostly happens behind closed doors and is often obscured behind the big headlines about the crisis in the NHS.

“Social care needs to be championed in public for its crucial role in supporting people to realise their right to independence, their connections with the people and places that matter to them, their wellbeing, and their ability to participate in work, school and community.

“The Scottish Government needs to start talking about why social care matters – not just to keep the NHS on its feet, but to keep people on theirs. And it needs to articulate a plan for how it will invest in, and finally deliver, Fair Work.”

“This campaign is a first step on that journey and we hope everyone who cares about Fair Work will give it their support.”

Through the campaign CCPS’s members and wider civic society will alert the Scottish Government to why delivering on Fair Work is fundamental for the future of Scotland’s social care workforce.

Over the next three months, in the run-up to the Programme for Government and spending review, CCPS will be sharing voices, views and calls to action through the campaign.

Find out more about the campaign and take part.

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