Social care in crisis now, MSPs warned

Social care in Scotland is in crisis now and there is no reason why changes cannot be made ahead of the formation of a national care service, a union organiser has said.

The Scottish Government has tabled a Bill at Holyrood to create the service, centralising child and adult social care.

But the Bill has been criticised by some as lacking detail, with most of the service to be created by secondary legislation as a result of “co-designing” with staff, users and experts.

Speaking to the Social Justice and Social Security Committee on Thursday, Cara Stevenson of GMB Scotland’s women’s campaign unit said: “Our position is social care is in crisis now and there’s no reason why changes can’t start happening now.

“Never mind co-design or other discussions, we know what the issues are in social care.

“We can’t recruit staff, we can’t retain them – that’s a big issue for service users and people who rely on that service, that’s something that we need to be doing at this second.”

Discussing the desire of social care staff to be involved in the co-design process, Ms Stevenson said the Bill in its current form asks staff to “take a leap of faith” on how the service would look.

She said: “The Bill itself, it does not achieve the aim to improve the quality and consistency of social work and social care services in Scotland – it’s not prescriptive enough as yet.

“What we’re seeing is actually trying to get the workforce involved in this is quite difficult because there’s not enough in the Bill for them to want to be involved in it.”

Ms Stevenson said “you can’t imagine” what staff went through during the pandemic, adding: “To now be turning around with something that’s quite non-prescriptive and subject to co-design and ask the workforce to take a leap of faith on this, I think it’s really, really difficult to get people involved in it and get people to support it.”

Calls for the Bill to be paused were rejected by social care minister Kevin Stewart earlier this week.