COSLA and Scottish Government held discussions on the tapering of sustainability support which had been mentioned in the letter extending support into September. You may remember that this letter stated support would be tapered through August and September.
We are attaching the letter which was issued on 28 August. Scottish Care was consulted during this process and our arguments were that we were very concerned indeed that support would be removed in totality. This cliff-edge has at least been avoided and our requests that there should be an ability for providers who were experiencing difficulties to raise these at a local level were indeed heard.
Our major points of concern relate to care home occupancy and care at home funding.
One of the challenges is that there are some care homes where occupancy has returned to where it had been previously and some which are indeed in a better position than pre-Covid. However there are a significant number which are considerably down from pre-Covid figures. We do not have robust data on these issues and the Digital Daily Huddle (albeit on only half of the home inputs) is indicating to Government that occupancy is close to 90% across the country. Given the slow return of social work funded clients coupled with the low number of self-funders and the ongoing concerns over people being able to visit relatives we are very concerned that this situation will not improve and that the funding being offered till the end of the year will not be sufficient.
We need to get further detail from members on these issues, both in terms of care at home payments ending and also care home occupancy. You will note that there are at least some positive statements re payments for Covid support in terms of Covid costs and PPE..
Please refer to the discussion board and put your views forward there.
Thank you.
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