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Scottish Care responds to Covid-19 Committee Inquiry on easing lockdown

The Scottish Parliament’s COVID-19 Committee recently sought written and oral evidence on possible options for the Scottish Government’s “exit strategy” from the lockdown restrictions and the extent to which this could involve a phased approach across different localities within Scotland. 

Scottish Care submitted written evidence to the Committee regarding the ways in which lockdown and its easing impacts the social care sector.  Our submission focused on how the sector must be supported and engaged with around four main areas:

  • Impact on vulnerable groups
  • Impact on wellbeing
  • Easing visiting restrictions
  • Testing

Scottish Care’s submission can be read here: https://scottishcare.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/COVID-Lockdown-Arrangements-Scottish-Care-29-May-2020.pdf

Dr Donald Macaskill also provided oral evidence to the Committee on 10 June 2020.

 

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Vidatec Ltd – Engage4

Vidatec Ltd – we are an award winning mobile app development company based in Scotland and focus on developing apps across 3 focus areas Health & Wellbeing / Social Good & A Better Working World. One in every twelve people use our apps such as the Couch to 5k Running App developed in collaboration with Public Health England.

Key Benefit of Engage4:

Engage4 provides a toolset to help improve your employee wellbeing & engagement via an easy to use mobile app. Track, measure, encourage and improve employee wellbeing with points and badges designed to increase positive engagement and behaviour.

*See specific benefits on page 2 of our fact sheet.

The pricing works based on size of organisation and information can be found via the following link:

https://engage4.vidatec.com/

Contact information

Please request for offers via this link, where you will be contacted by a member of the team: https://engage4.vidatec.com/

For any enquiries, please contact:

David Park
Business Development Manager
W: www.vidatec.com
T:  +44 (0) 1786 357100
M: +44 (0) 753 8411367

FINAL Product Fact Sheet
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Statement for unions around staff Statutory Sick Pay

We have been approached by members who are looking for advice on responding to queries from unions around Statutory Sick Pay. We have developed a standard statement below to help support providers when answering these queries. 

Social care sector employers are unable to pay the workforce higher rates of sickness and absence pay as over 75% of care services are commissioned by Local Authorities with public money and care at home employers are restricted from topping up SSP and rates of pay due to the amount they receive for their services.  Service rates are set during contract tendering processes, are generally in place for a number of years and do not make allowances for annual uplifts to increase the workforce rate of pay and to capture sick pay requirements.

In addition, for Care Homes there is in place a National Care Home Contract and the cost model that was used to agree funding was set by Scottish Government at the Statutory Sick Pay amount.  This has resulted in care homes again not having the additional funding in place to devise their own absence policies with a higher rate of sick pay for staff.

The Fair Work in Scotland’s Social Care Sector 2019 report highlighted the inconsistencies facing the workforce and states that “despite some good practice and efforts by individual employers, the wider funding and commissioning system makes it almost impossible for providers to offer fair work.”  The report also states “Commissioning agencies under budget constraints are only willing to pay for the actual amount of time that direct care services are delivered“.  This ensures that there is no additional funding in place to pay backfill for staff and therefore the employer can only access the Statutory Sick Pay allowance to cover staff absences.

We are aware that work on Statutory Sick Pay is currently ongoing between the Scottish Government and COSLA. Individuals from UNITE and UNISON are also involved in these discussions. It is our hope that practical arrangements will be established as soon possible and care providers are able to pay their workforce higher rates of sickness pay. This will greatly assist individual workers to make the appropriate decisions re allowing themselves to be tested.

After this current settlement we trust that everyone involved will show an equal endeavour to ensure that we have an adequately resourced commissioning processes so that employers can be contracted at rates which are fair and thus enabling of fair work.

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‘Time to Talk’ – Covid-19 Listening Service

‘Time to Talk’

COVID 19 Listening Service available for relatives and residents in care homes

An Edinburgh – Glasgow project of EIFA https://www.edinburghinterfaith.com/

Good day,

I am writing to you on behalf of EIFA – Edinburgh Interfaith Organisation (a multifaith organisation which seeks to enable understanding and mutual respect within communities). The Scottish government has provided seed money to launch a service that will seek to be supportive to care home residents and their families during this time of Covid-19. As we all know, these unprecedented times have hit the care home sector especially hard, with families often unable to visit their loved ones living in care homes.

We will offer a seven day a week (11am – 7pm) opportunity for care home residents and their family members to be listened to by volunteers via the telephone. The volunteers will be vetted for their experience and training as listeners. We hope that care home residents (who are able) and their family members will gain some solace and peace from this and that it will be a support for staff who are under pressure.  Additionally, as this service is being offered through a multi-faith organisation, callers wishing to speak directly to someone of their faith will be connected through our service. It is important to note that although EIFA is a multi-faith-based organisation,all care home residents and their family members are welcomed to make use of this listening service – be they of a particular faith or none.  Also, it is important to stress that this service will offer an understanding and empathic listening service; there will be no advice or counselling offered.

 All calls will be held in the strictest confidence; only very basic background details will be noted as a record of who is making use of this service, to inform future and ongoing offering of this service.

As the manager of this listening service, I am asking if you would be willing to help to get the word out to your residents and their families about this service, so that they may perhaps find a measure of comfort during this most difficult time. I have attached a flyer that can be printed-off and posted/made available to your residents and their families. I am happy to answer any questions or concerns you may have, as well as your suggestions as to additional ways we can let care home residents and families (at present only within Edinburgh and Glasgow) to make use of our service.

Many thanks for reading this letter.  We hope that this service affords a measure of support for all involved. Please feel free to contact me at any time; I will phone you in the few days to follow-up on this.

Thank you and best wishes,

Dr Claire Garabedian

Project Manager – Time to Talk

ClaireA[email protected]

07519 418451