Love is not a word you will find in most policy documents. It does not feature in strategic frameworks, regulatory standards, or workforce planning spreadsheets. It is too soft, too subjective, too human. It resists the tidy categorisation of outcomes or indicators.

Yet, walk into any care home, supported living service, or the home of someone receiving daily support, and you will find love everywhere. Not the commercialised romance that dominates 14th February each year, but the quieter, sturdier forms of love: presence, patience, kindness, fidelity, and regard. These are not sentimental extras. They are the hidden architecture on which good care depends.

We speak of care as if it were primarily a task, something to be delivered, commissioned, or purchased. We live in a time when so much of care is framed through metrics: minutes allocated, tasks completed, regulations checked. These things matter because they provide structure and accountability, but they do not reveal the soul of care. They cannot. Because the soul of care is relational. It lives in the space between people. It is the meeting of one human being with another at a point of need or vulnerability. And it is love, in its broadest and most elemental sense, that makes this meeting transformative rather than transactional.

To name love explicitly in this context is not sentimental. It is honest. It is professional. It is human.

Love appears in the way a carer notices the slight change in a resident’s breathing. In the way a support worker sits quietly with someone in the distressing confusion of dementia. In the way a team keeps vigil at the bedside of a person approaching the end of their life. In the way families entrust their mother, father, partner or child to the hands of strangers who, over time, become companions.

None of these fits easily on a procurement form.

In recent years, we have become braver in acknowledging that the emotional labour of social care is real labour; skilled, demanding, draining, and profoundly important. But we still hesitate to name love as part of that skill set. Perhaps we fear sentimentality. Perhaps we worry that invoking love will weaken the professional boundaries we have so carefully crafted. Or perhaps we are uneasy with the idea that a system so chronically underfunded depends on something as immeasurable as the human heart.

But naming love does not diminish professionalism; it deepens it. It reminds us that care is not simply a service but part of the moral fabric of society. Love is what roots dignity. It is what honours the personhood of individuals who may have lost speech, memory, mobility, or independence. Love refuses to reduce people to tasks, conditions, or risks. It insists that each person is deserving of attention, respect, and warmth.

I have long believed that the crisis in social care is not only a funding crisis, workforce crisis, or demographic crisis. It is also a crisis of imagination. We have forgotten that systems exist to serve human beings, and not the other way around. If love were recognised as a central component of care, we might design our structures differently. We might prioritise time over throughput. We might value continuity of relationship rather than the cheapest unit cost. We might reward the emotional intelligence required to soothe, reassure, and accompany.

Love, after all, is not free. It requires time, training, support, reflection, and fair pay. It requires leaders who understand the emotional ecosystems of their services. It requires political leaders courageous enough to speak not only of budgets and efficiencies, but of the ethical duty we owe one another.

Love is costly. It demands presence, patience, resilience, and vulnerability. It asks carers to carry the stories of others as gently as their own. It asks families to trust strangers who will become companions. It asks society to honour those at the margins, not with pity, but with regard.

And perhaps, if we are truly bold, it requires us to rethink what we consider to be success. A life well supported may not be measured in metrics, but in moments of connection: the smile that returns after days of silence; the shared memory that breaks through the fog of dementia; the comfort of being held, known, and not abandoned.

And when love is absent? We see loneliness deepen. We see distress unaddressed. We see people reduced to tasks and time slots. We see a system that may function on paper but fails in humanity.

This Valentine’s Day, while the world trades roses and declarations, it is worth pausing to honour the quieter forms of love that shape the everyday practice of care across Scotland. The love that is expressed in touch, tone, patience, and presence. The love that sustains people at their most fragile. The love that is given freely, but not without cost. The love that sustains social care in Scotland through long nights, under immense pressure, in moments of grief and in moments of joy.

Love may never appear in the formal architecture of our social care system. But without it, nothing holds. Love is not the soft centre of care. It is the structure. Love is the architecture.

As I reflect on the central argument of this piece; that love is the hidden architecture of care, I’m drawn again to the clarity of our poets. Naomi Mitchison, was a woman of fierce humanity and political tenderness, and in her work, she names love as a kind of ballast: a weight that keeps the world from spinning apart. Her steady, grounded lines feel perfectly at home in the landscape of care.

She understood that love and belonging are often expressed not in grand gestures, but in the small acts that hold people in relationship with one another. Her voice reminds us that care is built from these daily, patient continuities.

So it feels right to close with Mitchison’s poem,  a reminder that love does the quiet work of holding things together, in poetry as in care.

“Love Poem”

Naomi Mitchison

Love, like a stone at the rim of the world,
Holds the edge of things together;
It is the weight that keeps the sky from falling,
The stillness that steadies the weather.

Not loud, not sudden, not possessed,
But patient as the turning sea;
Love is the thing we build with daily,
And the thing that builds us, quietly.

Donald Macaskill.

Photo by Mayur Gala on Unsplash

There are moments in public life when the gap between rhetoric and reality becomes so wide that it can no longer be bridged by warm words, sympathetic tones, or polished political narratives. The Scottish Government’s 2026–27 Budget is one such moment. It speaks the language of dignity, rights and fairness, yet delivers a settlement that undermines all three. For those who work in social care, and even more critically, those who depend upon it, this Budget is not simply inadequate. It is to put it frankly, a betrayal.

The tenth anniversary of me doing this job as the CEO of Scottish Care comes on the 1^st April. I remember it well because on the 1^st April 2016 the ground-breaking and at the time dramatically innovative commitment of the then Scottish Government to pay all care workers the Real Living Wage (or as we used to call it the Scottish Living Wage) came into force. Indeed one of my first tasks as CEO, was a radio interview to laud the game-changing nature of this action. But even then, although it valued workers, we all recognised it was a first step on a journey towards the proper reward and renumeration our critical frontline care workforce deserved. Along with many others I had been involved for months in the planning for the day and in ensuring there was sufficient funds in place. We didn’t get it completely right, and there remains huge issues f equity not least at local government level, but it was a great first step. Roll on ten years and we have a very different set of behaviours at play in the current Scottish Government.

The Real Living Wage: a promise broken

The Real Living Wage was meant to be a baseline of decency, a statement that Scotland values the people who provide intimate, skilled and emotionally demanding care. It has been a continual commitment of successive administrations. Yet the latest Budget fails to fund this commitment. COSLA described the Budget a failure “to fully fund… the Real Living Wage to workers in Adult Social Care”, leaving local authorities to absorb the difference.

The consequences are profound.

Social care organisations, particularly independent, charitable and small providers, cannot magic up unfunded wages. They operate on ultra‑thin margins, with fee rates set by local authorities. When government increases wage expectations without increasing funding, providers must either cut services, reduce hours, freeze recruitment, or hand back contracts. This is not hypothetical. It is already happening.

And all this means that staff who are continually told they are valued, are denied the means to live. Frontline workers hear ministers praise them as heroes while watching other sectors achieve pay rises. Without funded differentials, experienced workers earn the same as new entrants. Without stable contracts and predictable hours, workers juggle shifts to pay the rent. Without respect reflected in pay, they leave.

Every unfunded wage rise becomes a cut in disguise: shorter visits, inconsistent staff, unmet need, closed services, exhausted families. The Budget may never state it in writing, but this is how human rights erode, not by decision, but by neglect. And the human rights of those who use social care in Scotland have been run into the ground.

Government cannot meaningfully claim commitment to social care while shifting the financial goalposts year after year.

This is not partnership. It is the slow extraction of responsibility from government onto providers, workers and unpaid carers, cloaked in the language of “efficiency” and “local flexibility”.

The result is that councils will be forced to raise council tax; services are being trimmed to statutory minimum; community supports are being hollowed out and the most vulnerable and valuable of our citizens are being left with fewer options and longer waits.

Scottish Care’s verdict is unambiguous: “This Budget fails the people who rely on social care support – and those who deliver it.”

This failure is not abstract; it is personal. It touches so many lives.

It means older people waiting months for assessments and years for packages of care and support. When providers cannot recruit because pay is uncompetitive, packages do not start. People deteriorate. Families burn out. Hospitals fill.

It means people with disabilities whose independence depends on stable care relationships have their very autonomy undermined because of inconsistent staffing, driven by poor wages and high turnover, all of which puts their lives at risk.

It means unpaid carers are continually being stretched past breaking point. Shared Care Scotland and the National Carer Organisations highlight the absence of clear investment in short breaks, respite and local support organisations. These omissions are not oversights; they are choices.

It means that workers cannot afford to stay and cannot afford to leave. They hold lives in their hands daily, supporting complex care, offering emotional labour, and carrying profound responsibility and yet they are told, through this Budget, that their worth is negotiable.

Now I know that a Government Minister or spokesperson will give the oft quoted statement about ‘record’ investment. Indeed, ministers have presented the Budget as delivering a “record” £22.5 billion for health and social care and a “record settlement” for local government. But this narrative dissolves when placed beside the truth which is no full funding for the Real Living Wage policy for adult social care, children’s social care, or early learning and childcare.

These headline figures create the illusion of investment while disguising the truth: frontline social care does not feel “record” anything. It feels cut, stretched and disregarded.

If the Government truly believed in social care, the Budget would have:

• Fully funded the Real Living Wage, including progression and differentials.
• Provided ring‑fenced, multi‑year social care funding aligned to evidence‑based cost‑of‑care models.
• Invested in ethical digital transformation rather than delaying core infrastructure until 2029.
• Protected and expanded community‑based supports that keep people well.

These actions would stabilise the system, honour the workforce, and safeguard human rights.

The 2026–27 Budget represents a deliberate political choice: to underfund social care while claiming otherwise. It asks the workforce to bear the burden of government decisions. It asks families to fill the gaps left by inadequate planning. It asks providers to deliver more with less until they collapse. It makes clear that this Government no longer funds the Real Living Wage for frontline carers.

But most of all, it asks the people who need support to wait. To cope. To endure.

That is not dignity. It is not fairness. It is not Scotland at its best.

It is a betrayal—and it must not stand.

Donald Macaskill

Photo by Sarah Agnew on Unsplash

There is a moment, often somewhere in our 50s or 60s when the future shifts its angle. The horizon draws closer, the noise recedes, and a quieter question makes itself heard: What do I want to leave behind?

Not the inventory of possessions, but the pattern of our presence. The imprint of our care. The courage of our convictions. The habits of kindness that might keep on happening after we are gone.

This blog is an invitation to linger with that idea of legacy: how the desire to leave something of worth shapes our older age; what the psychology says; and how we can attend to it in ourselves, in our families, and in the craft of social care.

I find myself in this space because this past week I’ve been reflecting on my own late twin brother who died 8 years ago last week. Too soon and too young, with so many left empty by his absence. As is so often the case in someone who knows that they are going to die, we did not spend the time that we could have in reflecting or speaking about what life had been like. We spent the time we had left together in laughter and remembrance, in anecdote and fondness, keeping the uncomfortable away and the fear largely unmentioned.

But this past week both because of his own early death and because of so many others who I know, and the far too frequent conversations I have, I have spent time reflecting on legacy and purpose.

It is perhaps a truism to say that there are days when life’s timetable is torn up. A diagnosis, a sudden decline, and the horizon that once stretched decades ahead now feels alarmingly near.

Psychologists have long observed that, in mid-to-late life, that many of us turn outward with a concern for the generations to follow. My old psychologist inspiration Erik H. Erikson called this generativity, the developmental pivot from “What did I achieve?” to “Whom and what did I grow?” The fruits are not just external. It is the impulse to nurture what will outlast us.

Generativity predicts better well‑being and even stronger cognition in later life, whereas its shadow which is described as stagnation can shrink our world to self-preoccupation, which is often the accusation of those in older age.

What is undeniable is that numerous sources of research show that people who engage in legacy-building, through storytelling, mentoring, or creating tangible gifts, report lower anxiety, greater sense of purpose, and improved emotional well-being, even in palliative contexts.

Legacy work is not about grandeur. It is about continuity: ensuring that something of our values, our love, our wisdom remains in the world when we cannot and perhaps especially in the lives of those whom we have loved and who mean so much to us.

Another favourite, Dan McAdams’ psychological research adds texture to the work of Erikson on legacy, arguing as he does that highly generative people tend to tell redemptive life stories, transforming setbacks into service, threading meaning through adversity; such narrative style correlates with psychological adaptation and prosocial engagement. Legacy is not only what we do; it is how we narrate what we’ve done, which is in and of itself critical because that story mobilises us to keep giving. It is the words we chose to tell the tale of our being in life.

As we grow older and age we also reorganise our motivations. Laura Carstensen’s work on Socioemotional Selectivity Theory shows that as time horizons feel shorter, we prioritise emotionally meaningful goals and relationships. Legacy work naturally fits this shift: we invest in fewer, deeper ties and do things whose meaning can be felt now and remembered later.

We can see this in clinical and care contexts as well. Life review work which was first described by Robert Butler in the 1960s, offers structured reflection that helps older adults integrate memory, resolve regrets, and move towards integrity. It’s a cornerstone in later‑life and palliative practice, and when facilitated well and sensitively, it can reduce distress and enhance a sense of coherence: a psychological soil in which legacy grows.

Then at the end of life, Dignity Therapy takes this further: a brief, guided process that invites people to record what they most want remembered. Research trials report heightened dignity, meaning, and perceived benefit for families with the legacy document becoming a tangible bridge between the living and the soon‑to‑be‑bereaved.

If we want to leave something of worth, psychology suggests two reciprocal movements: doing (generative acts) and meaning-making (stories that redeem and bind).

This past week I have been reflecting on the extent to which in residential care and in homecare in all our palliative care and support of residents and citizens whether we have properly maximised the potential of legacy work. Because even accepting all the understandable constraints of time, resource and capacity I am not sure we have. And at the same time I am equally convinced just how important for the grieving and bereavement of those we leave behind; how critical it is that we do much better at this work which is to aid the art of dying and the gifting of legacy.

For those of us whose work it is to care and support folks at the end of their lives, I think we need to get better at embedding life review and legacy work in assessments and care planning (especially in hospice, care homes, and community nursing). We need to train staff in dignity‑conserving practices; create quiet rituals for recording and returning a person’s words to their family. We need to measure outcomes beyond symptom control: track family perceptions of meaning, appreciation, and connectedness post‑bereavement.

All that might just start by asking the ‘why’ questions, however provisional they may be. An encouragement to try to write a brief “legacy sentence”: “I want the people and places I love to be more X because I was here.”  It might move on to a guided life review where time is set aside – together or alone – to walk your story: chapters, turning points, the regrets that still disquiet, the gifts you’ve given and received.

And of course, all of this means tackling head on all the barriers that silence people. Those who have spent a life convincing themselves that they have nothing to leave. This is poverty of imagination, not of worth. Those who say, “Talking about death feels morbid.” Completely understandable on the one hand but at the same time we know that shared meaning and esteem buffer anxiety. In community, we can approach finitude not with fear but with craft: rituals, conversation, song. And there is so much more practitioners of endings in care home and community can do.

Legacy is not the marble we carve; it is the meal we keep setting. It is the apprentice we welcome into the workshop; the young carer we notice and support; the foreign‑born neighbour we draw into our circle until this land is also theirs.

Our social care, when at its best, is legacy in motion: the daily transfer of attention from one generation to the next. It is where the values we say we hold are stress‑tested against reality. If we make our services places where people can remember, make meaning, and give one last time, then we will have honoured the dignity of ageing and have given space and place to a legacy that never ends.

Bequeathal

Leave not the stone with your name,
leave the path you wore through the field,
the one that knows your footfall and invites another’s tread.

Leave not the chair at the table,
leave the habit of an extra place,
the cup that finds the hand that trembles.

Leave not the answer, clean and sure,
leave the question, kindly asked,
that opens like a gate and lets the younger through.

Leave not the purse alone,
leave the skill of open hands,
and the craft of making enough into plenty.

Leave not the speech fine‑phrased,
leave the story told in kitchens,
where steam writes blessings on the window glass.

Leave not a claim on land,
leave belonging to a people,
soil in the marrow, duty turned to joy.

And when the light goes thin,
and names begin to loosen from their faces,
let what you have planted be your speaking:
the neighbourly knock; the steady chair;
the path; the cup; the open gate.

 

My late twin had two loves in his life – his family and his roses – after he had died, I took cuttings of some of the roses and to my great surprise managed to get them to grow in my own garden in another country from their original soil. Even after transplanting they lived on – a memory, a legacy of his creativity and so much more. Planting what outlives us in hope and love, dignity and desire, is the work we should all seek to undertake, every day.

If legacy is love with a timetable, then ageing is not the end of that work; it is the season when love gets organised. May we be found busy planting what will outlive us and may Scotland’s people and places be the richer for it.

Donald Macaskill

Photo by Amarbayasgalan Gelegjargal on Unsplash

The third Saturday of January 2026 arrives not with celebration, but with a heavy sense of reckoning. The Scottish Government’s newly announced Budget, for all its rhetoric of renewal, has once again relegated social care to the margins. For those of us who live and breathe social care, this is not just a policy disappointment rather it is a profound moral failing. The question before us is urgent and inescapable: What kind of Scotland do we want to create together, and why does our Government not share that vision?

Every day, in every corner of Scotland, social care is the quiet infrastructure that holds our communities together. It is not a discretionary spend, nor a luxury to be afforded only in times of plenty. It is the scaffolding that allows individuals to thrive, families to stay together, and communities to flourish. Yet once again, this Budget treats care as an afterthought: “a budget that talks about dignity but does not fund it”.

In the wake of this Budget, each of the six pillars which comprise the vision within  the Scottish Care 2026 Election manifesto Care Creates feel more like a distant aspiration than a policy reality. Rights‑based budgeting and ethical commissioning remain words on paper, not principles in practice. The workforce; already stretched to breaking, faces another year of undervaluation and uncertainty. Promises of integration and innovation ring hollow without the resources to make them real. And now, Scottish Care’s own analysis makes the picture starker: the budget “falls dramatically short of what is required to protect essential care and support services, the workforce that delivers them, and… the individuals, families and communities who rely on them.”

We cannot ignore the consequences of this chronic underfunding. Workforce shortages deepen, finances grow ever more fragile, and the scars of austerity persist. Increasingly we are relying on people to pay more and more for their own care and support whilst the Government pays less and less. Increasingly this current Government is creating a two tier social care system in Scotland whether by default or deliberate design. The Government has failed to meet COSLA’s call for an additional £750 million in core funding to stabilise and grow social care support. Instead, providers are left “delivering more with less,” absorbing unsustainable costs and shielding people from the fallout of an under‑resourced system.

“Care Creates” is not just a campaign tagline; it is a summons to action and a framework for transformation. The Scottish Care Manifesto for 2026 sets out a bold, necessary vision: six pillars that, if embraced, could reshape our nation.

1. Rights at the heart of Social Care

Human rights are non‑negotiable. Embedding rights‑based budgeting and ethical commissioning ensures decisions reflect the voices of those who rely on support. Yet, as the Budget analysis makes clear, this Government has again offered “no ring‑fenced protection for social care support, no alignment to the true cost of care”. Human rights cannot flourish in the vacuum left by insufficient investment.

2. Fair Pay, Fair Work, Fair Care

A thriving social care system demands a valued workforce. Fair remuneration, career progression and parity with NHS roles are essential. But “warm words will not pay the bills”. The Real Living Wage uplift, while welcome, remains inadequate without funded differentials or career pathways. With thousands of vacancies, we cannot afford to lose more skilled professionals to sectors offering better pay and lower responsibility.

3. Integration across systems

Care cannot exist in silos. We know that integrated care teams reduce admissions and transform outcomes. But without resources, integration is rhetoric. Today we face “crisis conditions” where unmanaged pressures threaten to further reduce care packages and increase unmet need across health and social care. We are faced with the sad daily reality that people are dying whilst waiting for their care but because they are unseen by everyone except their families, they are the hidden victims of a broken system.

4. Future‑Ready Care

Our sector has proven its capacity for innovation, from digital tools to climate‑conscious planning. Ethical AI and adaptive models offer huge potential- but only if investment matches ambition. Instead, Scotland remains “a decade behind before we even begin,” with key digital infrastructure not expected to be social‑care‑ready until 2029 – an “unacceptable delay” that entrenches inefficiency and stalls innovation.

5. Investing like it matters

Funding care is not charity: it is a strategic, national economic investment. Every pound invested in social care returns more than double in socio‑economic value, strengthening local economies and enabling people to live well in their communities. Yet this Budget once again chooses not to unlock those benefits for Scotland.

6. Care for people and planet

Ethical commissioning, sustainability and community wellbeing must shape every decision. But the absence of robust investment renders environmental and community ambition fragile. As Scottish Care notes, “This Budget does not meet the moment”: a moment demanding bold choices, not incrementalism.

The “Care Creates” campaign exists to shift public and political understanding: social care is not a cost to be contained, but an essential investment in Scotland’s future. It underpins health, drives economic participation, sustains communities and supports family life. Yet at a time when “providers are closing” and “workforce shortages are at crisis levels”, Scotland’s Budget has offered neither boldness nor stability.

It has chosen caution where courage was required.

It has chosen system preservation over human flourishing.

It has chosen short‑termism over Scotland’s long‑term wellbeing.

Disappointment must not become despair. Realistic positivity means acknowledging the constraints while refusing to surrender hope. It means saying: Yes, the road is hard, but it is not impassable. It means recognising that although Government has not led, we will.

As Scottish Care affirms:
“Investing in social care support is not a cost, it is a national dividend. Care creates stability. Care creates opportunity. Care creates Scotland’s future.”

Even as we face disappointment, we are never alone. Together we can influence change, support those who suffer, and celebrate the compassion, expertise and community that define our sector. With courage, creativity and solidarity, we can build the Scotland we know is possible; one where social care is not an afterthought, but the beating heart of national life.

Care creates Scotland’s future.
If our Government will not lead, then we must.

Donald Macaskill

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

 

The turning of the year always invites reflection and an opportunity to consider both personal and societal priorities and ambitions. It offers us an opportunity to reflect not only on what lies ahead but on what binds us together as a community and for me the ties that bind us are often seen best and most clearly at times of loss and grief. Bereavement is not a private shadow; it is a communal experience that shapes the health and wellbeing of our society. As we step into January, I am thoughtful of the extent to which as a society and as communities in Scotland we do or do not support every single person who is living with loss and experiencing grief in our midst at this time.

Bereavement is not merely a health service concern; it is a public health issue. Research shows that unresolved grief increases risks of mental illness, physical health decline, and economic strain through lost productivity and higher healthcare costs. I became very well aware of this whilst serving as a Commissioner on the UK Bereavement Commission and listening to the stories of hundreds of individuals whose lives were so damaged by grief. Poor bereavement support both costs lives and cripples our economic wellbeing. A very convincing article in The Lancet some eighteen months ago reminds us that failure to integrate bereavement care into public health systems leaves families vulnerable to illness and isolation, exacerbating the societal toll of loss. It forcefully argues what I believe personally to be truthful and that is that investing in bereavement care and support is a public health priority.

This past week those individuals and organisations involved in Scotland’s National Charter on Bereavement for Adults and Children, which was launched in 2020, published their Manifesto for the upcoming Scottish Parliamentary elections.

The manifesto calls for:

• A National Bereavement Lead within government to coordinate policy and ensure bereavement does not fall between departmental cracks.
• Investment in Bereavement Charter Marks for workplaces, schools, and other locations such as prisons and ordinary businesses thus creating cultures of compassion where grief is acknowledged and supported.
• Community Partnerships that embed bereavement support in local networks, from hospices to voluntary groups.

The Manifesto uses a number of case scenarios to show the sort of success that has been achieved to date, all of which evidence compassion in practice and the positive impact that good bereavement support can bring to communities as well as individuals.

It tells the story of ten Scottish schools who have embraced the Bereavement Charter Mark, integrating grief literacy into education and partnering with local hospices. Teachers report that this work “takes a village” building resilience and empathy among pupils and staff alike. The Manifesto shows how employers adopting bereavement-friendly policies have seen improved staff wellbeing and retention. As one case study notes, “a single act of kindness kept me afloat”—a reminder that organisational culture can transform grief into belonging.

Strong bereavement support is not charity; it is social infrastructure. A 2023 study by Marie Curie and Warwick University found that equitable access to bereavement care reduces health inequalities and fosters community cohesion, particularly for marginalised groups. When grief is met with understanding, people return to work sooner, families avoid crisis, and communities grow stronger.

The Charter Group is making simple asks of our new parliamentarians and whoever it is that will form the next Scottish Government. These practical steps are to:

1. Fund the Vision: Allocate resources for Bereavement Charter initiatives – especially by resourcing the process with £250K over three years which is a modest investment for systemic change.
2. Appoint a National Bereavement Lead: The next Government needs to create a dedicated role within Scottish Government to coordinate bereavement policy and practice across departments.
3. Develop a National Bereavement Strategy: The lack of a national strategy is a real gap in Scottish public policy. We need to co-produce a national strategy for bereavement support, building on the Charter and addressing gaps in the current palliative care strategy
4. Embed Bereavement in Public Health strategies: We need to integrate grief support into mental health and wellbeing plans, ensuring timely, culturally competent care. This can be achieved by more groups adopting the Charter Mark, but that work needs to be resourced.
5. Mobilise Communities: We need to encourage local employers, schools, and voluntary groups to adopt Charter principles and collaborate with bereavement organisations, and lastly
6. Prioritise Succession Rights in the Housing Bill: We need to implement actions to protect the housing rights of terminally ill people and bereaved families.

As someone who has walked alongside countless individuals and families in the aftermath of loss, I know that bereavement is not an event rather it is a landscape. It shapes how we live, work, and belong. Policy matters because it signals what we value as a society. When we invest in bereavement support, we invest in humanity. When we consider bereavement support as a matter of societal and economic priority then we shape our communities into places where all are welcome, where none are excluded even in the rawness of grief and the pain of absence. Bereavement support opens the door to belonging.

Belonging is not a feeling we manufacture; it is a practice we share. It looks like a school that teaches grief literacy and a workplace that keeps the door open when someone returns. It looks like a local café that knows how to hold a silence, and a parish that lights a candle with a name. It looks like government appointing a Bereavement Lead and resourcing Charter Marks so compassion becomes ordinary and everywhere. It looks like the neighbour who brings bread, the nurse who calls back, the friend who sits and says nothing at all. If we want a Scotland where everyone has a place, then we must keep making places where grief is met, supported, and held. When we invest in bereavement support, we invest in community. When we stand with the grieving, we stand with ourselves.

The UK Commission on Bereavement captured this truth with clarity:

“Bereavement is everyone’s business. It is not a niche concern but a universal experience that demands a collective response.”

Starting the year with compassion means making this more than a slogan. It means embedding bereavement care and support into the architecture of our communities and the heart of our governance. As we’ve set out in the Charter and its Manifesto, these are simple, fundable acts that make compassion part of the everyday. Let us make 2026 the year we turn manifesto into movement.

I am mindful of one of my favourite poems from a favourite poet, Jackie Kay, who offers us a tender, communal vision of how those who have died  “are still here holding our hands,”

Darling

You might forget the exact sound of her voice
or how her face looked when sleeping.
You might forget the sound of her quiet weeping
curled into the shape of a half moon,

when smaller than her self, she seemed already to be leaving
before she left, when the blossom was on the trees
and the sun was out, and all seemed good in the world.
I held her hand and sang a song from when I was a girl –

Heel y’ho boys, let her go boys –
and when I stopped singing she had slipped away,
already a slip of a girl again, skipping off,
her heart light, her face almost smiling.

And what I didn’t know or couldn’t say then
was that she hadn’t really gone.
The dead don’t go till you do, loved ones.
The dead are still here holding our hands.

Darling by Jackie Kay – Scottish Poetry Library

 

Donald Macaskill

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash.

As the calendar turns and we stand at the threshold of a new year, I find myself drawn to reflection not least on what I consider to have been the significant changes and developments in social care in the last year, and what this new one might bring. That for me has undoubtedly been in the arena of Ai in social care. I am reflective of the journey so far, the companions who have shaped my thinking, and the ethical crossroads that lie ahead for social care in Scotland.

The rapid advance of artificial intelligence in our sector is not just a technical story; it is, at its heart, a human one. And as we look forward, I believe it is essential to ground our ambitions in the enduring values of dignity, autonomy, and justice. I offer this extended thought piece as a contribution to that ambition.

My first instinct is gratitude. The conversations and collaborations of the past year, especially with the Institute for Ethics in Ai at Oxford, the Digital Care Hub, and Casson Consulting, have given our sector a shared language for what ‘responsible’ Ai should mean in social care. Their Summit and White paper gave us a shared language for dignity, autonomy and equality in the age of automation. I am equally grateful for the practical clarity offered by the AI & Digital Regulations Service (AIDRS), which brings together NICE, MHRA, CQC and HRA in England to help health and social care organisations navigate regulation. And I acknowledge UN human‑rights experts who have insisted, I think quite rightly, that the procurement and deployment of AI must be grounded in robust human‑rights due diligence.

All this work has served to remind me that human rights and ethics is not an afterthought, but the very foundation of innovation.

Why a human‑rights approach to AI in social care is non‑negotiable

Ai is already here in adult social care. We see systems that transcribe and draft notes and care assessments, support language translation, monitor movement to reduce falls, and triage requests for support. These tools hold promise, but they also reach into the most intimate spaces of life, our homes, our relationships, our routines. That depth of reach demands a depth of ethics. Oxford’s work in our field is clear: responsible use means Ai must support and never undermine human rights, independence, choice and control, dignity, equality and wellbeing. UN guidance adds the necessary governance spine: carry out human‑rights due diligence across the Ai lifecycle, engage those most affected, and ensure access to remedy.

Regulatory currents are shifting underneath us. The EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act is now law, with staged obligations and a risk‑based structure that bans certain “unacceptable‑risk” practices (for example, systems that exploit vulnerabilities or enable unlawful mass surveillance), sets transparency duties for limited‑risk systems, and imposes stringent requirements on high‑risk uses. Even for Scottish providers, this matters: EU rules apply whenever AIisystems or their outputs are placed on the EU market or used in the EU which is an extraterritorial pull that many supply chains and software subscriptions already trigger.

In the UK, there is as yet no single Ai Act. Instead, a regulator‑led approach asks sector regulators to enforce five core principles (safety, transparency, fairness, accountability, redress) under existing law. For health and social care, AIDRS and NHS information‑governance guidance have become the de facto playbooks: proportionate assurance, safe evidence, clear data rights, and ethical oversight. In short: the EU sets a high, codified floor; the UK expects context‑based governance through existing duties. Scotland must live comfortably with both. I would particularly commend here the blog written by John Warchus which unpacks some of this hinterland.

PANEL: how I turn “rights” into decisions

In a previous article I argued that this is an ethical and rights space that benefits from the implementation of the well-recognised PANEL human rights framework. Nothing that is happening now has changed that perspective and personally I would commend the continued use of the PANEL principles: Participation, Accountability, Non‑discrimination, Empowerment, Legality, to move from slogans to practice. Let me illustrate some of this:

Participation

People who draw on care, unpaid carers and frontline staff should shape Ai before it arrives. Participation is not a survey at the end; it is co‑design at the start and dialogue throughout. The Oxford collaboration modelled this: bringing people with lived experience into the room, defining “responsible” in the language of care, not merely in the grammar of compliance. In my view, participation must include real choices about trade‑offs, say, between night‑time safety and the sanctity of the home, because these are moral choices, not merely technical settings.

Mrs M lives with frailty and prefers to sleep with her door ajar. Her care home trials a thermal‑imaging night monitor to reduce falls. In a participation session, residents and families ask: Can we disable the device in private moments? Where is the data processed? Who can review it? The home agrees to local (on‑premise) processing, automatic masking of faces, visible “privacy on” indicators, and a resident‑controlled off‑switch. The result is not the absence of technology; it is what Jenna Joseph calls consented technology.

Accountability

We need an accountability map for every deployment: who is the provider/deployer and who is the vendor/importer; who signs off risks; who investigates incidents; how can residents and staff escalate concerns; what goes into the public learning log? The EU AI Act gives practical scaffolding, namely roles, risk management, post‑market monitoring, all of which I would contend Scottish providers can adopt to make accountability legible even in a UK regime that leans on existing law.

A local authority pilots an LLM that drafts care assessments from worker dictation. After several weeks, managers notice the model confidently inserts “no risk of self neglect” where the worker had simply paused. An incident is logged; the authority’s accountability map lets a resident, a worker and the vendor meet to replay the transcript and model output. The authority introduces a “yellow banner” policy: any AI generated statement about risk must be explicitly confirmed by the social worker, or it is struck out. This example builds on some of the excellent ethical considerations espoused by Rees and Edmonson.

Non‑discrimination

Bias audits must be routine. Predictive models trained on skewed data can channel more surveillance toward some groups than others, or depress service offers without anyone intending harm. NHS ethics work emphasises countering inequalities; UN guidance insists on HRDD with those most at risk. In social care, we should publish fairness metrics, not hide them in procurement files.

A homecare provider uses an Ai scheduler. Complaints rise from women working school‑hours who get fewer paid visits. A fairness audit shows the model equates “availability” with a 12‑hour window and penalises constrained patterns. The provider resets the objective function to value continuity of relationship and paid breaks, not only distance and minutes. Complaints fall; retention rises.

Empowerment

Human rights require capability. We must make explanations understandable, options visible, and opting‑out feasible. Generative tools should lower barriers for those who do not speak English as a first language, or who want draft letters in accessible formats, without locking people into systems they cannot question. UK information‑governance guidance is clear: professionals remain decision‑makers, and individuals retain rights over their data.

Amira, recently arrived in Scotland, struggles to draft a support request. A co‑produced LLM assistant helps her write in Arabic and produces a plain‑English summary for her key worker. The service’s policy, shaped with users, states that the assistant never submits letters; Amira reads, edits and approves every word. Empowerment is the difference between a tool that writes for me and one that lets me say what I want to say.

Legality

We must separate lawful bases for direct care from those for training or improving systems. We need Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs), contracts that say what data can (or cannot) be used for, and documentation that shows how we manage risk. For high‑risk uses, the EU AI Act expects a full risk‑management system and technical documentation; UK guidance expects the same good governance, anchored in GDPR and equality law.

A supplier proposes to “improve accuracy” by training on de‑identified care plans. The provider’s DPIA flags re‑identification risk for small island communities. The contract is amended: no secondary use without explicit, revocable permission from the individual; only synthetic or federated approaches may be used for model refinement; independent re‑identification testing is required before release.

 The human rights we must actively protect (and how AI touches each)

When I talk about a human‑rights approach, I mean specific rights not vague goodwill.

• Dignity: The first test is always whether the person’s sense of self is enhanced or eroded. Ambient sensors and “smart” cameras risk reducing people to data points, especially older adults. Dignity is preserved when surveillance is not the default; when there are off‑switches; when people choose how technology shows up in their home.
• Privacy: Home should remain a sanctuary. Data minimisation, local processing, strict retention limits and audit trails are the ethics that make sanctuary possible. The EU AI Act’s bans and transparency duties give guardrails, but we must reach for the higher standard of trustworthiness experienced by the person.
• Autonomy and Informed Consent: Consent for direct care is not consent for model training. People should be able to say “yes” to one and “no” to the other. Explanations must be understandable, and meaningful alternatives must exist. UK IG guidance is explicit about these distinctions in care contexts.
• Equality and Non‑discrimination: Age, disability, race, language and socio‑economic status can interact with AI in harmful ways. UN experts call for HRDD with at‑risk groups; NHS programmes focus on countering inequalities. Make fairness testing public and fix disparities quickly.
• Participation and Voice: People affected by Ai must have a say. Co‑production is a right, not a courtesy. Oxford’s co‑produced guidance shows how to do this well in social care.
• Accountability and Remedy: Grievance routes should be accessible and non‑retaliatory, with independent escalation. Document AI incidents (privacy breach, discriminatory output, harm to autonomy/dignity) and publish learning. AIDRS provides pathways for when regulatory notification is required.
• Workforce right and professional judgement: AI must augment care and support work, not deskill workers or micro‑surveil them. Scheduling and productivity analytics need limits and worker voice. Oxford’s governance work and sector commentary both underline this.

Scotland’s digital and policy context: making rights operational

Scotland’s Data Strategy for Health and Social Care emphasises data ethics, interoperability and “better use of data” in preventative care, with work underway toward an Ai policy framework. This is precisely where PANEL and HRDD must be baked in, not as an afterthought, but as the organising principle for design, procurement and evaluation. The Scottish AI Alliance has moved the public sector toward greater AI transparency, and that same ambition should explicitly extend to adult social care.

Scotland’s continuing debate on social care reform and international human rights incorporation is a reminder that law matters when resources are thin and systems are stressed. As the Health and Social Care Alliance have  clearly articulated Ai  must never become a technical shortcut for structural under‑investment. Efficiency that erodes relationships or displaces human judgement is not progress; it is a re‑statement of the very problems we claim to solve.

On a Hebridean island, a care provider is offered a “smart home” package: video monitoring, voice analysis, predictive alerts. The team ask residents to join a design circle. The answer that emerges is: “No, unless it is privacy‑first, entirely local, and unless our crofts feel like crofts, not clinics.” The vendor re‑engineers the solution: devices process on‑device; cameras are replaced by door sensors and pressure mats; and a human call‑back is guaranteed within 10 minutes of any alert. Rights shape the technology, not the other way round.

 

How EU and UK legislation will impact social care in Scotland

Let me put this plainly and practically.

EU AI Act: what Scottish providers must understand accepting the comment above about best practice and legal requirement given our non-membership of the EU at present.

• Risk‑based duties: The Act bans certain uses outright (e.g., systems exploiting vulnerabilities, certain emotion‑inference and untargeted biometric scraping), requires transparency for limited‑risk tools (like chatbots), and imposes heavy governance on high‑risk systems (risk management, data governance, technical documentation, post‑market monitoring). In social care, high‑risk categories often include systems that materially influence access to services or safety, or that manage workers in consequential ways.
• Who is on the hook? The Act distinguishes providers (those who develop or place a system on the market) from deployers (those who use it), as well as importers and distributors. A Scottish care organisation using a vendor’s tool is typically a deployer but may inherit provider‑like obligations when customising or substantially modifying a system. Contracts must make these roles explicit.
• Extraterritorial pull: If your system or its outputs are used in the EU – perhaps because you serve people funded from an EU jurisdiction, or your vendor markets the same configured product into the EU- you can be brought under the Act’s scope. Care technology is global; procurement must assume cross‑border obligations.

A Scottish care home adopts a falls‑prediction platform from a vendor whose product is also sold in the Netherlands. The vendor classifies the system as high‑risk under the EU Act and asks the home to contribute to real‑world performance monitoring. The home agrees on conditions: the vendor provides the conformity assessment and post‑market monitoring plan; the home captures outcome data only with resident consent and publishes a lay summary locally. The result: the home benefits from better safety while remaining on the right side of both EU and UK expectations.

UK approach: what anchors apply in Scotland

• Principles via existing law: The UK expects regulators to apply five core principles through current frameworks rather than creating a single AI statute. For social care, this means leaning on UK GDPR, equality law, and sector IG rules, plus clear, proportionate assurance. AIDRS acts as the navigational aid across NICE, MHRA, CQC and HRA.
• Health/social care specifics: NHS information‑governance guidance clarifies consent, data minimisation, and the continuing role of professionals as decision‑makers. The NHS AI Ethics initiatives and MHRA’s “AI Airlock” are developing practical safety and evidence expectations, useful anchors even when tools are used in social care rather than the NHS.
• So what for Scotland? Health and social care are as we know devolved, but UK regulators and guidance still shape market behaviour. Scottish providers should adopt the highest applicable standard: use EU AI Act role definitions and documentation discipline, follow UK IG rules on data and consent, and align with Scotland’s Data Strategy commitments on ethics and transparency. This “belt and braces” approach reduces risk, builds public trust, and future‑proofs practice.

Practice patterns I commend:

• Co‑produce from the outset: Assemble standing forums of people who draw on care, unpaid carers and staff to review proposals, test interfaces, and agree consent flows. Treat this as governance, not engagement.
• Publish an Ai register: What systems do we use? Why? What data do they process? What is the lawful basis? Who is accountable? How can people complain? (If you only have a procurement file, you do not have accountability.)
• Bias and equity routines: Run fairness tests at go‑live and on a schedule; commission independent audits for consequential systems; correct disparities and publish fixes.
• Privacy‑by‑default architecture: Prefer local processing; minimise retention; create human‑readable logs so that residents and families can see what happened and why.
• Explainability for humans: Build short, accessible explanations; train staff to challenge the model and to document overrides; avoid any fully automated adverse decision.
• Contracts that protect rights: Require vendors to disclose training data sources, known limitations, bias mitigations, and incident response plans; prohibit secondary use without explicit permission; align role allocations with EU AI Act definitions.
• Remedy pathways: Offer simple reporting for residents and staff; classify incidents (privacy, bias, harm to dignity/autonomy); share learning in public. Use AIDRS to judge when to notify regulators.
• Worker voice and wellbeing: Set boundaries on algorithmic monitoring; involve staff and unions in tool selection; invest in digital and ethical literacy; design for augmentation, not substitution.

Closing reflection: the humanness of care

I hope you have found the above useful as we start to navigate Ai in social care in 2026 from a human rights and ethical perspective. There is a lot more to say in this conversation. But essentially social care is a human practice and art before it is a service. Ai will be judged not by how clever it seems, but by whether it helps people live the lives they choose, surrounded by relationships that dignify and sustain them. The frameworks are now at hand, the Oxford values‑led guidance, the UN’s HRDD expectations, the EU Act’s structure, and the UK’s principle‑based oversight. Our task in Scotland is to make them lived reality: to ensure that, in our homes and communities, technology becomes a tool for care, not a technique of control.

Donald Macaskill

Photo by Luke Jones on Unsplash

Four days before Hogmanay, Scotland feels like a country holding its breath. The streets glisten with frost after what feels like weeks of rain, a growing number of hills wear their winter shawls, and the air oozes with anticipation. The rush of Christmas has ebbed, leaving behind a quieter rhythm and a time for reflection, for counting what matters, for dreaming what might yet be.

Hogmanay is not just another New Year’s Eve. It is a threshold, a liminal space steeped in tradition. We sweep the hearth, we lay out coal and shortbread, we wait for the first-foot – that lucky soul who crosses the door after midnight, bearing gifts of warmth and sustenance. Bells will ring from church steeples and smartphones alike, whisky will pour amber into glasses, voices will rise in song.

But beneath the revelry lies something deeper: a belief in renewal, in the possibility of beginning again.

And so, as we stand on the cusp of 2026, we ask the question that Hogmanay demands: What will we carry forward? What will we leave behind?

This past year has been a hard one for social care. We have seen dedicated workers stretched thin, families navigating impossible choices, and communities stepping in where systems faltered. We have heard the language of crisis so often it has become a drumbeat. And yet amid the strain there were and are today sparks of light. Neighbours checking in. Volunteers delivering meals. Carers delivering compassion even in the fragments of commissioned time. Care homes finding creative ways to keep hope and joy alive. These moments remind us that social care is not a service to be rationed; it is the heartbeat of our humanity.

As Hogmanay approaches, we are invited to make resolutions. Too often, they are about waistlines and wallets, about doing more, being better. But what if this year, our resolutions were about something deeper? About the kind of Scotland we want to wake up to on January 1st – a Scotland where care is not a postcode lottery but a shared promise.

Here are three resolutions for a Scotland that cares:

1. Speak of care as infrastructure. Care is not an optional extra; it is the foundation of a good society. Let us resolve to talk about social care with the same urgency as roads and schools because without it, nothing else stands.
2. Invest in people, not just systems. Technology can help, but it cannot replace the human touch. Let us resolve to honour and reward those who care, the professionals and unpaid carers alike, and to do so with fair pay, respect, and recognition.
3. Make community our first footing. Hogmanay’s tradition of first-footing reminds us that the first person through the door brings luck for the year ahead. What if our first step in 2026 was towards deeper community? Towards knowing our neighbours, supporting local initiatives, and weaving networks of kindness?

Picture it: the bells ringing out across Edinburgh, their echoes tumbling down the closes and wynds. The clink of glasses in kitchens from Shetland to Stranraer. The hush before midnight, when the old year lingers like smoke and the new year waits like a promise. A lump of coal on the hearth, symbol of warmth and continuity. A dram of whisky passed from hand to hand, the colour of hope. Laughter spilling into the frosty night as doors open to welcome the first-foot, carrying gifts of bread and salt, symbols of sustenance and friendship.

This is Hogmanay: a ritual of connection, a declaration that we belong to one another. And if that is true in our homes, should it not also be true in our policies, our priorities, our politics?

For me, Hogmanay is never just about fireworks or whisky. It is about standing in the cold night air, listening for the bells, and asking: What kind of Scotland do I want to wake up to? My answer is simple: one where no one feels forgotten. Where social care is not a crisis but a covenant. Where the measure of success is not GDP but the dignity of every life.

Four days to Hogmanay. Four days to decide what matters. What will your resolutions be? And how will they help build a Scotland where social care is not just a service, but a shared value?

Hogmanay is a time for words as well as deeds. So I leave you with this:

New Year

No fireworks needed, no grand display,

just a quiet shift from night to day.

A message sent, a hand held near,

a whispered truth: We’re still here.

Forget the lists that fade by March,

the hollow vows, the rigid arch.

Begin instead with what is real,

a promise made, a wound to heal.

Not coal, but care to light the fire,

not luck, but love to lift us higher.

Bring voices strong, bring laughter clear,

bring hope enough to last the year.

The future waits – no distant star,

it starts with us, right where we are.

So open wide the door of now,

and let the new year teach us how.

Donald Macaskill

Photo by Chris Flexen on Unsplash

 

 

The frost clings to the windows of a care home. Inside, a carer hums a carol, her voice soft against the hum of an oxygen machine. A resident stares at the tree lights, wondering if her family will come. Across town, an unpaid carer sets down her shopping bags and begins the evening routine of lifting, washing, soothing, all the while as the kettle boils in a kitchen that feels both sanctuary and prison. In another village, a homecare worker drives through sleet to reach an older man who waits for help with his supper.

This is the paradox of Christmas in social care: joy and fragility intertwined. For Scotland’s care homes, homecare services, and unpaid carers, this season arrives amid deep uncertainty, the reality of staffing shortages, savage cuts because of Government under-funding, loneliness that lingers like winter fog. We long for certainty, for answers that will fix the cracks. But what if certainty is not the gift we need? What if hope, fragile yet fierce, is the light that can guide us?

The Scottish social care sector stands at a critical place as we come to the end of this year. Reports speak of workforce crises, rising costs, and the emotional toll on carers stretched beyond measure. Families worry about quality and continuity; providers wrestle with sustainability and even survival itself. Homecare services struggle to recruit and retain staff, lack of commissioned care means many older people are waiting for visits that never come. Unpaid carers, often family members, carry invisible burdens, sacrificing careers, health, and rest to keep loved ones safe.

In such a climate, the instinct is to seek certainty, and to do so through rigid policies, technological fixes, or predictive models. But life, especially life at its twilight, resists such neatness. Prognoses shift, needs evolve, emotions defy algorithms. Whether in a care home, a living room, or a carer’s kitchen, uncertainty is the constant companion.

Last month I was privileged to take part in a workshop and to attend a session delivered by Dr. Ariel Dempsey. It was during the always wonderful Scottish Partnership for Palliative Care Conference and this past week I was fortunate to meet up again with Ariel when I was in Oxford.

Ariel’s doctoral work at Oxford reframes uncertainty not as a problem to be solved but as an experience to be palliated – soothed, softened, and held with care. In her thesis, Palliating Uncertainty: Tools from the Pragmatism of William James, she argues that uncertainty causes suffering akin to physical symptoms and therefore deserves the same compassionate attention as pain or breathlessness. Traditional responses – over-investigation, over-medicalisation – often amplify distress rather than relieve it. Instead, Dempsey proposes an approach grounded in the ethos of palliative care: acknowledge uncertainty, orient toward meaningful action, and cultivate relational support.

Drawing on William James’ pragmatism, Dempsey frames uncertainty as an invitation to act rather than a barrier to truth. James wrote of “the will to believe”; the idea that when evidence cannot decide, hope becomes a genuine option. For Dempsey, this means clinicians (and by extension, carers) must act with humility and courage when certainty fails. We cannot eliminate uncertainty, but we can meet it with grace.

Her practical steps include managing expectations: naming uncertainty openly rather than masking it. It also means turning attention to action: asking, “What matters most now?” instead of “What will happen next?” And most importantly it means relational holding: building communities of care where uncertainty is shared, not borne alone.

This is not abstract philosophy. It is deeply relevant to social care. For homecare workers, it means entering each home with openness, knowing that plans may change and emotions may surge. For unpaid carers, it means finding strength in the ordinary, in the ordinary acts of making tea, sharing stories, all the time while living with questions that have no easy answers.

Liz Lochhead captures this time of yearning and longing in her winter verse from Festive Poems:

“These are the shortened days
and the endless nights.
So wish for the moon
and long for the light.”

In care homes, in kitchens, in cars parked outside rural cottages, these shortened days are literal and metaphorical. Yet the act of wishing – the audacity of hope- is itself a form of resistance against despair.

Hope, in this frame, is not naïve optimism. It is active, relational, embodied. It is the quiet courage to believe that even in the shadowed places, light can still break through. In social care, hope takes shape in small acts: a carer learning a resident’s favourite song; a homecare worker pausing to share a laugh; an unpaid carer finding respite through a neighbour’s kindness.

William James reminds us that hope is a moral choice when certainty fails. To hope is to act as if goodness is possible, even when the evidence wavers. For Scotland’s care homes, homecare services, and unpaid carers, this means investing not only in infrastructure but in relationships. It means training carers in presence, not just procedure; designing systems that honour the mystery of life, not just its metrics.

Another Scottish poet Josephine Neill’s A Christmas Poem offers a vision of hospitality that mirrors the heart of care:

“Step ower the straw
Draw ben tae the fire
Afore the day daw.”

This is what care should feel like: an invitation to warmth, a shelter against the cold. In a world obsessed with efficiency, such gestures are revolutionary.

Christmas itself is a story born in uncertainty: a child in a manger, a family far from home, a future unwritten. And yet, hope arrived not as certainty, but as promise. This is the hope we need in social care: not the brittle assurance that all will be well, but the resilient trust that love can flourish even in fragile places.

The true gift of Christmas is presence. For those who live and work in care homes, for homecare workers driving through winter nights, for unpaid carers who give without measure, that gift is you – the carers, the families, the communities who choose to love in the face of the unknown.

As we look to renew our communities and social care and support, let us not seek perfect answers but better questions. Let us shape care, whether in homes or residential homes, into sanctuaries of meaning, where uncertainty is met with grace and hope is practiced daily. Let us remember that policy and funding matter but so do poetry and presence, song and silence, firelight and friendship.

This Christmas, may we embrace the dance of uncertainty. May we choose hope not as sentiment, but as strategy, not as illusion, but as moral courage. For in that choice lies the future of care.

In the hush of winter’s breath,
Where questions linger, answers flee,
Hope is not a fortress strong;
It is a candle, trembling free.

It does not banish all the dark,
Nor silence every fear we keep,
But in its glow, we find the strength
To love, to listen, and to weep.

Donald Macaskill

Photo by Leni on Unsplash

 

Social care in Scotland stands at a critical juncture. Rising demand, workforce shortages, and financial pressures have created a system under strain.

For years, reform efforts have focused on structural fixes, the introduction of integrated boards, new governance models, and performance targets. We even came up with the ill-fated National Care Service. Yet, the lived experience of many remains fragmented. Why? Because we have been trying to manage complexity with tools designed for simplicity.

Occasionally there are times when certain parts of your life and worlds come into creative engagement. I recently had such a moment when I listened to a superb speech being delivered by Professor Toby Lowe and recognised the synchronicity of his words with my role as Chair of NDTI who are continually trying to promote and develop creative ways of addressing broken systems in their work, not least the failures to deliver citizen-led and controlled social care and support.

Professor Toby Lowe’s work on Human Learning Systems (HLS) offers a radical alternative to a lot of traditional and normative social care reform approaches. It begins with a simple but profound truth: outcomes can not delivered – they emerge from complex systems of relationships. This insight challenges the dominant logic of control and invites us to design systems that learn, adapt, and serve human flourishing.

Traditional public service management, shaped by New Public Management philosophy and practice (beloved of civil servants and Prince 2 learning systems) assumes that outcomes can be specified, measured, and purchased through contracts. In reality, social care outcomes which are after all wellbeing, independence, or dignity, are created by hundreds of interacting factors: family support, housing, community networks, health services, and personal resilience. Holding providers accountable for outcomes they cannot control leads to gaming, stress, and worse results.

It turns professionals into bureaucrats and people into cases. Scotland’s experience with integration shows this clearly: structural change without cultural change achieves little.

Lowe’s Human Learning System approach rests on three principles:

• it is Human – see people as unique, not data points. Design bespoke responses that start with individual strengths and aspirations.
• it is Learning – make learning the engine of improvement. Use cycles of inquiry and adaptation, not rigid plans and targets.
• it is about Systems – nurture healthy systems: trust, collaboration, diversity, and shared stewardship across organisational boundaries.

Instead of asking, “How do we deliver outcomes?” HLS asks, “How do we create the conditions for good lives to emerge?”

In his talk Toby Lowe cited the innovative work being undertaken in Leeds. There Leeds City Council have embraced a strengths-based approach that aligns beautifully with HLS thinking. This has led to a liberation of social work and social care. They have moved from care management to relationship-based practice. Social workers became “travel companions, not travel agents.” It has as a result reduced bureaucracy, by cutting assessments from 52 pages to two conversational pages. It has led to real community investment through small grants for local initiatives that build resilience and belonging. And critically it has been rooted in system stewardship with senior leaders giving a clear mandate: “Do no harm. Don’t break the rules. Don’t break the budget. Otherwise, go for it.” This created psychological safety for innovation.

The result was social workers reporting feeling empowered, and citizens experiencing care as something co-created, not imposed. For those who were around at the start of Self-directed Support in Scotland, this is what we dreamt of and we can only yearn for such achievements.

I mentioned my work with NDTI and it is through their work that some of these principles are becoming more rooted in parts of Scotland. The National Development Team for Inclusion (NDTi) has helped spread these ideas through its Community Led Support (CLS) programme. CLS creates local hubs where people can have “good conversations” about what matters to them, reducing bureaucracy and connecting them to community resources.

In Scotland, CLS has been implemented in East Renfrewshire, South Ayrshire, Scottish Borders, Fife, and South Lanarkshire, with measurable impacts. Waiting lists have been reduced (e.g., Scottish Borders saw a 37% drop). There was evidence of improved staff morale and reduced bureaucracy; of better outcomes for people as a result of quicker access and more community-based solutions. And CLS also demonstrates cost-effectiveness by preventing crises and reducing reliance on statutory services bringing clear economic benefits.

These changes echo HLS principles of trust, learning, and human-centred design.

I think Lowe’s approach has clear potential for Scotland as we struggle with complexity by too often delivering simplistic responses. Applying these lessons means:

1. Commission for learning, not control – fund organisations to adapt with people, not hit arbitrary targets.
2. Invest in relationships and communities – strengthen local capacity and trust, because outcomes emerge from networks, not contracts.
3. Create connected learning systems – link insights from frontline practice to policy, so reform grows from lived experience rather than top-down design. And stop obsessing with the mistruth that the only people with ‘lived experience’ are those who are currently using care and support. Cast the net wider to the users of tomorrow, to the workers of today and the employers of the moment. They all have invaluable lived experience to teach a failing system.

This is not about importing a model wholesale. It’s about embracing principles that honour complexity and human dignity. Leeds and CLS show that when you trust professionals, invest in communities, and make learning the core of improvement, transformation happens.

Imagine a future where a district nurse, a social care worker, and a community volunteer co-design support around a person’s life. Where local teams share learning openly, shaping policy through lived experience. Where success is measured not by throughput or cost per case, but by stories of flourishing.

This is not utopian. It is already happening – in Leeds, in many other places in England as well as in Scotland. The question is whether we have the courage to scale it.

As Toby Lowe reminds us: stop pretending the world is simple. Embrace complexity. Learn together. Build systems that serve human freedom and flourishing not that feed the gods of performance and the cult of system outcomes.

Donald Macaskill

 

Photo by Armand Khoury on Unsplash