Well, it came to an end this week, or at least on this side of the Atlantic. After months on the road the phenomenon which is Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour ended a five-night run in London’s Wembley Stadium. The BBC reported that The Eras Tour has seen Taylor perform to ‘almost 1.2 million fans in the UK, and last night’s show was the 131st date of the tour worldwide. Speaking at the gig, she said: “I’ve never had it this good before. I’ve never had a crowd that’s so generous.”’

The economic benefit to the communities and locations in which she has toured has been enormous. The Taylor Swift phenomenon has impacted right across the UK this summer… and I must confess, even if grudgingly at first, I have become a Swiftie! It is hard not to do so with a ten-year-old as part of your life constantly turning the car radio onto one of the many 24-hour Taylor Swift channels.

But behind all the feathers and friendship bangles, the Stetson hats and t-shirt dresses, it is the lyrics to her songs which have caught my attention. In no small way she is one of the few whose ability to craft meaning through words and music, and to tell a story of depth and insight, makes her for me at least rank along my all-time hero Bruce Springsteen. And no more so than in speaking of grief, hurt, loss and sadness.

I grew up at a time when people very rarely talked about their feelings and what might be called the big questions of life, especially about death, dying, grief and loss. Emotions were buttoned up and put aside and folks argued we just needed to get on with living.

But over time that cold detachment within society has gradually thawed. And a major contributor to that change has been the way in which the arts and entertainment has become the vehicle and means of expressing deeply held thoughts and emotions.

Indeed a few years ago I used to run a workshop called ‘Death at the Movies’ in which I tried to help health and care staff to recognise that everywhere in contemporary cinema the themes and issues people tried to ignore and shy away from were staring them in the face – literally!  I tried to show that whether in the world of the latest Disney movie or on popular TV soaps that there was an honest and a very real, sometimes raw, attempt to deal with the hard questions of life, death and meaning in a way which helped people open up and to start to talk.

I would suggest that remains the case in a lot of contemporary cinema but the last few decades have also really witnessed the ability and desire of popular singers to use their music and lyrics to deal with some of life’s hard questions.

And why is all this important? Well at the most basic level we all need to get better about talking about death and dying, about managing grief and doing the work of mourning, and we are enormously helped in doing that if that which entertains and inspires us, be it cinema or music, is being used as the vehicle for that communication.

In the previous few decades in my life no-one encapsulated the ability to tell a story, and to make me think about the realities of life, love, death and dying better than Bruce Springsteen. Taylor Swift is tackling the same issues, opening the same door to honest reflection and critical thinking, for a new generation – and for that I much admire her.

Springsteen and Swift deal with the themes of loss and grief in different ways, ways that reflect their own personalities and experience, but also the era and unique time they both live in. That is what makes their contributions important.

Taylor Swift speaks to and for her generation, in a unique and accessible way. Increasingly her lyrics particularly in albums like Folklore and Evermore, and especially in tracks like “My Tears Ricochet” and “Marjorie,” try to translate the universal experiences of sorrow into relatable experiences. She describes her own finding of solace amongst heartache and her melodies underpin the truth that grief is not just a moment but a journey that goes on.

‘The autumn chill that wakes me up
You loved the amber skies so much
Long limbs and frozen swims
You’d always go past where our feet could touch
And I complained the whole way there
The car ride back and up the stairs
I should’ve asked you questions
I should’ve asked you how to be
Asked you to write it down for me
Should’ve kept every grocery store receipt
‘Cause every scrap of you would be taken from me
Watched as you signed your name Marjorie
All your closets of backlogged dreams
And how you left them all to me.’

(from Marjorie, Taylor Swift)

Bruce Springsteen has long spoken to me and many with death and grief a companion within his songs, whether in the iconic “The River” or the reflective “Terry’s Song,” Springsteen confronts mortality with a hard, unflinching gaze. His music and its raw description of the nature of loss, loss of youth, decaying towns, and passing friends, shows the nature of community supporting sadness, of grief held up by collective strength and solidarity.

‘They say you can’t take it with you, but I think that they’re wrong
‘Cause all I know is I woke up this morning, and something big was gone
Gone into that dark ether where you’re still young and hard and cold
Just like when they built you, brother, they broke the mold

Now your death is upon us and we’ll return your ashes to the earth
And I know you’ll take comfort in knowing you’ve been roundly blessed and cursed
But love is a power greater than death, just like the songs and stories told
And when she built you, brother, she broke the mold’

(From Terry’s Song, Springsteen)

Whether it is Swift’s or Springsteen’s music, grief and death are not merely subjects but are portrayed as integral parts of the human experience. They invite us to sit with our sadness, to reflect on the impermanence of life, and to find beauty and meaning in the midst of loss. While Swift’s approach is deeply personal and introspective, often channelling the inner turmoil of grief, Springsteen’s work often looks outward, exploring how communities and individuals grapple with death and its aftermath.

Ultimately, these artists and the many, many creatives, who use their art to speak of deeper truth, remind us that grief is a universal experience, yet deeply personal in its expression. Whether through Swift’s intimate, lyrical narratives or Springsteen’s expansive, anthemic storytelling, the themes of death and grief resonate across their music, offering solace and understanding to those navigating their own losses.

For those of us who work in places and spaces where we are invited to bring solace and comfort, to enable and encourage others to ask life’s questions, I think we would all do well to let the singers sing, the story tellers talk, the television play and the silver screen entertain with the truth of loving.

Donald Macaskill

I have always been fascinated and intrigued by photography, One of the first ‘big’ presents I got as a child was a simple camera. It was an Olympus Trip 35. This was in the days of using real film on a roll, taking it to the chemist and waiting a few days for the photos to develop. The sense of disappointment that the landscape image or unique portrait I had spent time capturing had not quite worked but was instead a blurry mess was my more usual memory.

As I grew older, I moved into the world of SLRs with lenses and tripod and all the paraphernalia. Taking a photograph became an act of carrying the equivalent of the kitchen sink with me and to the annoyance of many it took so so very long to set up and capture that perfect image! And in all honesty, I’m not that sure it was often achieved! I still possess some of this equipment, but it sits in the bottom of a cupboard unused and gathering dust.

The main reason for such neglect is the rapid development and improvement of my iPhone which produces photos of amazing quality and provides options which are instant and accessible. Equally important is the ability to take so many and delete even more!

I am thinking a lot of photography at the moment because on Monday coming, (the 19^th August), we will be observing World Photography Day which is a globally recognised celebration of the photograph and its history.

Apart from taking countless pictures I have always been fascinated by the way in which photographs were and are able to bring me into another world. Photographs have an astonishing power and ability to root us in memory.

I have attended loads of photography exhibitions from the masters like Henri Cartier Bresson who brought 1930s Paris and the faces of its streets alive, or the Glasgow giants like Oscar Marzaroli whose images of Glasgow children in backcourts depicted the grim reality of poverty in the 1950s and 60s so sharply, or my favourite from last year the American Great Depression chronicler Dorothea Lange whose stark imagery painted the true picture of dustbowl poverty and racial discrimination in the pre-World War Two US. There is a lot to learn by looking through the lens of a great photographer.

Growing up I poured over the few family photographs we had and benefited as the year passed and as we inherited more family black and white snaps, from my mother putting names to faces, stories to images, and memory to the captured moment. Photographs were the door to the history of a time and people I belonged to but could not be present amongst.

When I have sat with those I have known who lived with dementia or have been in care homes I have witnessed just how valuable a tool photographs and photography are in supporting people who live with dementia. Even when her dementia was really bad my mother seemed to come alive when she took off her glasses, looked at a photograph, and the sparkle of a happy moment or even a sad reflection brought her to the point of telling the story it held.

Photographs can help in so many ways. They can trigger memory, giving a feel and recall of the moment and help someone preserve that critical sense of identity which dementia often strips away. They can help someone find the words and language which allows them to say what they are feeling at that moment, and they can also act as a means to calm and soothe someone by rooting them into recollection. That is why I can attest to the powerful value of gathering photographs into a memory book for someone who might frequently forget things. As they look through the book memory is stirred, calmness soothes, and reflection is the quieter of hurt.

A picture does indeed tell a thousand stories. It can give us the words we have lost to speak of the moment which is ours. It can help us to spark a conversation and to express what might be too hurtful or hard to say directly.

I used to use photographs in supporting those who found words challenging and difficult because of age or disability, and to do so often around hard and emotional issues such as death, dying, grief and bereavement. A shared photograph, especially one with association and personal memory, allowed us to get alongside one another, to tell our tale of hurt or healing, by looking at and through the image in our hands rather than having to hold the gaze of the memory through direct eye contact. The photo became our distracted focus for feelings.

There are lots of families who come together very often at points of loss and grief and who in looking though albums and photographs heal one another’s hurt in that mixture of tears of happiness and emptiness.

I do sometimes wonder if in this instant photographic digital age that we are in danger of losing the tactile and tangible giftedness of the physical photograph; of losing the sharing of the image and the conjuring of delight, shock and admiration.

In an age where we have more cameras than we have ever had. In an era where there are more photographs taken than there ever have been, is there a danger that we have lost the art of using photographs as a solace and sharing of memory?

I read recently that 99% of photographs we take are never shared and never printed out. Now I am all for sustainability, but I fear we are losing something about the sustainability of tangible memory, the touch of recollection, the real power of the photograph to connect us to ourselves and to others.

Maybe that is why there has been such a growth recently in scrap-booking, and in apps which make it easier for us to print out and hold onto our photographs. Indeed, almost as a reaction to the digitisation of memory it is estimated by one commentator that the photo printing market is going to grow by over 10% in the next 5 years.

This World Photography Day I’ll take my phone and take a few pictures, but I will also go and print some, so that I and others can sit and share, reflect and remember, the moment which was captured and which tells a thousand words worth.

But of course everything including our photographs are in the eye of the beholder as the poet Drora Matlofsky reminds us:

My Father’s Father

Mum gave me a picture
of my father’s father.
(Her Alzheimer-clouded mind
doesn’t like photos,
because she seldom recognises
the faces looking up at her.)

‘I don’t know what to do with it,’
she says.

A forty-year old man
dressed as in the thirties
sitting on a low wall
looks far away
at something I cannot see
and smiles.

He died before I was born.
I know little of him.

I put the picture away
with other family photos.

Papa’s French father now sits alone
among Mum’s English relatives
he never met
and whose language he didn’t speak.
How ironic they should end up
in the same box.

My Father’s Father poem – Drora Matlofsky (best-poems.net)

Donald Macaskill.

Photo by Alexander Wang on Unsplash

The week just passed has been a bizarre and indeed sad one.

At the start of the week, I was expecting to speak at an event yesterday which was a celebration and recognition of work which had been carried out to address issues of racial discrimination in the delivery of care at home services. The project had involved members of staff from the Black and Minority Ethnic and Asian community, indeed mainly international colleagues, and had focused on addressing some of the discriminatory behaviour which unfortunately they had been experiencing in the local community.

The project was a wonderful example and evidence of what can happen when anxiety is addressed, when myths are dismissed and when collaboration and communication happen.

I should have been at the launch and celebration event for this work yesterday and at the start of the week I was preparing a brief address on why addressing race and ethnic discrimination was and is a part of compassionate care and support. The event was cancelled because some of those frontline BAME staff were anxious about coming to a venue where because of rumours of a potential demonstration nearby they were worried about their personal safety.

The past week has witnessed some appalling disturbing and distressing scenes in England and Northern Ireland. At a distance we have watched our television screens as right-wing activists and others have sought to destroy communities and have burnt down libraries, looted shops and businesses, and engaged in vandalism and hooliganism against people and property. It has been evidence of the worst of our humanity.

In Scotland we have seen some local incidents but have not thankfully witnessed any such scenes but what we have experienced is a growing level of fear and anxiety amongst our colleagues from the BAME communities who deliver care at home and social care and those who live in our communities. So instead of preparing a talk to celebrate the ability of people to come together and to address discrimination head on, what I was doing this week was writing support material for those who are delivering care support and trying to support staff who are anxious and fearful for their own safety.

I was brought up in Glasgow at a time in the late 60s in the 1970s during which the presence and prevalence of open racial discrimination was all too evident. I went to a school which had a huge diversity and knew at second hand the experience of abuse and violence which my fellow classmates of colour had to endure. I thought those days had left us. I had hoped that alongside many others that the malign mistreatment of an individual because of their skin colour, their culture or their religion was something we had largely dismissed into the pages of history. However, I have known also of the sad reality that racism is only slightly under the skin within our Scottish communities. I have written in the past about my own experience as someone working in equality and diversity over two decades of how over the years I was being met with increasing hostility and rejection rather than increased acceptance and inclusion.

It would appear that every generation has to learn the lessons of tolerance, compassion and kindness to neighbour. It is clear that every generation regardless of location has to learn the insights of what living and being in community is all about.

Addressing the racist undertones of Scottish society requires robust moral, ethical and political leadership at all levels, whether in a social care organisation where the issues are not dismissed but taken seriously, or political leadership where tone and language is sensitive to the way in which those with ill-intent will use fear and anxiety to stoke hatred and suspicion.

I have commented a lot about the way in which the amazing women and men who have come to Scotland to work in social care from all parts of the world have contributed to enabling us to become the communities, society and the nation we are and would want to be. They have enriched our humanity by the giftedness of their compassionate care and expertise.

I have commented on so many occasions how the toxic hostile culture created by the previous UK Government has fed into a negative narrative around immigration, not least their decision to refuse to grant visas to the dependents of those who are coming to Scotland under a social care visa. My fears about the impact of such a toxic negative and hostile response to immigration were affirmed in the last few days.

The Home Office published data this past week to show that there had been a sharp reduction in UK visa applications from care workers. There was a year-on-year drop of 82% with 2,900 people applying for a health and social care visa in July. Whilst some have suggested this is because recruitment has reached its peak, the experience of many Scottish providers is that we are still in very real need of the pipeline of international recruitment because of the particular demographics of Scotland with our ageing population and ageing workforce.

Those of us working in social care are very concerned that the toxic and hostile experience created by the previous UK Government around immigration, and the fear created by the events of the last week, will both serve to reduce the number who might want to come to Scotland to join us in caring and give those already here cause for reflection.

Creating inclusive communities where all are welcomed, affirmed and given a place; where people are allowed indeed encouraged to celebrate their unique cultural and ethnic diversity does not just happen by accident. It has to be worked at, resourced and encouraged. Community is created it doesn’t fall from the sky.

In the weeks and months ahead, I hope we will all of us endeavour to work hard to reduce the fear and anxiety and increase the sense of affirmation and welcome to all across Scotland. I hope our new UK Government will walk the talk and dial down the negativity around immigration, and one way of showing that is to remove the obscenity of the dependents of social care staff not being granted a visa to join their partners and be family.

As regular readers to this blog know I often read poetry as a means of escape, and for illumination and insight and before this week had begun, I had decided to buy the latest book of poems ‘May Day’ by Jackie Kay who was made Scotland’s Makar or National Poet of Scotland in 2016.

She’s written an amazingly insightful new book of poems dealing in no small measure with the issue of bereavement and grief but over the years she’s also written about what it was like to be brought up in Scotland as a biracial child and one of mixed heritage; she’s reflected on the perversity of discrimination, the name calling, the bullying, the stone throwing, the denigration and dismissal which is the fruit of racism. So, as well as reading her beautiful new work I picked up some of her other older poems because I think they express the experience of so many today.

Scotland is not immune to hatred. We have our own shadows which lurk in the corners of our civic existence. Our communities have been riven and split apart by divides, both artificial and real. To suggest that we are somehow immune from the hate of the other is to deny that reality. But we are also a nation which can mirror the truthfulness of our connection one to the other, people whose humanity can become the vehicle of our togetherness.

I hope we are as a social care sector a community where the essence of compassion is lived out in inclusion, where the difference of another is the source of celebration, where the contribution of someone from a different culture and background is recognised as the enrichment of our whole experience and that together we are stronger.

I end this week with the beautiful affirming yet challenging work of Jackie Kay and her poem

My Grandmother

My grandmother is like a Scottish pine,
tall, straight-backed, proud and plentiful,
a fine head of hair, greying now
tied up in a loose bun.
Her face is ploughed land.
Her eyes shine rough as amethysts.
She wears a plaid shawl
of our clan with the zeal of an Amazon.
She is one of those women
burnt in her croft rather than moved off the land.
She comes from them, her snake’s skin.
She speaks Gaelic mostly, English only
when she has to, then it’s blasphemy.
My grandmother sits by the fire and swears
There’ll be no darkie baby in this house

My grandmother is a Scottish pine,
tall, straight-backed proud and plentiful,
her hair tied with pins in a ball of steel wool.
Her face is tight as ice
and her eyes are amethysts.

Copyright © Jackie Kay,
Bloodaxe Books, www.bloodaxebooks.com

Poem: My Grandmother by Jackie Kay – English 1 – NDLA

Photo by DJ Paine on Unsplash

Donald Macaskill

I travelled to and from Manchester at the end of this past week. As usual I went by train and to say the least the stations in Glasgow and Manchester were busy – if not mobbed. I wasn’t surprised because it is of course holiday season and whether it’s English schools now being closed meaning visitors coming to Scotland or Scottish families getting away in the last few weeks before the schools re-open, as is always the case the period of late July and early August is very busy.

As I was travelling I couldn’t but recall a passing conversation I had with a care worker last weekend on the very topic of holidays. She had spoken to me of the fact that in her own words she ‘hated’ the holidays because as the sole parent of a couple of children it meant that an already challenged situation was made a lot worse because of trying to organise and pay for care and support for her young family given that she had no relatives living close by and that she, whilst she said she was paid more than some in the care sector, she was still not able to pay for the support her kids would like. Worst of all she said she hated not being able to give her children the holiday experiences that their friends had. It was for her a stressful and depressing times.

The reality of what has come to be termed ‘holiday poverty’ is nothing new. This past week a new study has shown that 39.7 million workers, 14% of the EU’s population, couldn’t afford to go on holiday for a week in 2022.

Importantly this research underlines that holidays are not or should not be something which only those who can afford them should have the right to take – holidays are fundamental for our emotional, psychological and physical health and wellbeing, not least for children. As the European Trade Union Confederation General Secretary, Esther Lynch stated a few days ago:

“It’s also unsafe for workers, they need to have time to recuperate… it is important for addressing burnout and making sure that you come back to work restored and refreshed… a holiday is not a luxury, having time away with family is key for protecting the physical and mental health of workers along with providing valuable experiences for children.”

As the report highlights one of the very real social developments which has benefited millions in the last century has been the recognition that vacations and holidays were a fundamental importance for the whole of society and not just for those who can afford them. We need the benefits of switching off, of de-escalation and relaxing, to re-charge our batteries and help us live and work better. In some sense we seem to be going backwards rather than moving forwards in regard to the health and wellbeing of our workers and society as a whole.

Sadly, there is nothing new in such reports – as long ago as 2017 in a significant report called ‘Hungry Holidays’ a Westminster Cross Party groups of peers and MPs warned that the life chances of up to three million children in the UK were under threat due to their risk of going hungry during school holidays. The children’s charity, Children in Scotland stated at the time that this reality was influenced by high childcare costs, and that:

“Going to school hungry and struggling through the long school holidays not only impacts children’s happiness and wellbeing, it severely limits their mental and physical development with long-lasting and wide-ranging consequences. They are most likely to suffer from type 2 diabetes, obesity and to have a healthy life expectancy of 23 years less than their most affluent counterparts.”

Data from various surveys and research indicate that the prevalence of food insecurity among families with children rises notably during school holidays. For example, a survey conducted by the Food Standards Agency highlights that food insecurity affects various demographics and has led to increased reliance on food banks and other emergency food provisions especially during the holiday period.

Whilst the care worker I spoke to last weekend was focussed on the summer holidays, holiday poverty is not just something which happens during the summer because school holidays make up around a quarter of the year – that is a significant amount of time for someone to be stressing about how her children are cared for and supported.

As well as the impact on individual workers and employing organisations who try to be as flexible as possible in re-organising shifts and patterns of work, there is a wider impact of holiday hunger upon the social care sector which often goes unrecognised, namely an increased demand for care and support. And all this is happening at a time when local support initiatives and projects are being bled of funding because of austerity and cost-of-living pressures.

Overall, the lack of systematic, widespread support during school holidays exacerbates existing inequalities and places a significant burden on Scotland’s social care sector, highlighting the need for comprehensive policy interventions to ensure all children have access to adequate nutrition year-round.

A society that allows children to go hungry in front of our eyes, a society which makes a mother feel useless because she cannot provide what she wants to for her children, despite working and giving of herself in a social care role, has a lot to ask of itself. And yes, at the risk of constantly repeating myself it is a society that needs to recognise the fundamental value of care and support through proper pay, terms and conditions for those who care and that such recognition has to be the foundation of any action.

As I watched the crowds at the train stations queue and jostle to ‘escape’ on their holidays I could not but think of those left behind, with too many adults and children hungry and stressed in a time of ‘holiday.’ Holiday poverty is a reality that seems not to have departed.

The poet Edwin Morgan as I have mentioned before in this blog used to come to my school in Glasgow and read some of his poetry to the classes. All his poems were direct and spoke to many in the room about the realities they knew only too well. As the city of Glasgow struggled to re-design and re-build itself the realities of those left behind were never lost to Morgan, and sadly today whilst the scenes may be different, I think there remains a sad resonance to today’s poverty in his poem Glasgow Sonnet i

A mean wind wanders through the backcourt trash.
Hackles on puddles rise, old mattresses
puff briefly and subside. Play-fortresses
of brick and bric-a-brac spill out some ash.
Four storeys have no windows left to smash,
but in the fifth a chipped sill buttresses
mother and daughter the last mistresses
of that black block condemned to stand, not crash.
Around them the cracks deepen, the rats crawl.
The kettle whimpers on a crazy hob.
Roses of mould grow from ceiling to wall.
The man lies late since he has lost his job,
smokes on one elbow, letting his coughs fall
thinly into an air too poor to rob.

From Collected Poems (Manchester: Carcanet Press, 1990). Taken from Glasgow Sonnet i by Edwin Morgan – Scottish Poetry Library

Photo by Niklas Ohlrogge on Unsplash

Donald Macaskill

This was my first full week back at work since I took annual leave this summer and as is often the case I have been catching up on meetings and reading reports. With your indulgence I want to reflect on some of the event(s) and meetings of the week because they each had a common theme, namely what is real partnership like.

I got around to reading the first report from the UK Covid Inquiry which was published last Friday 19^th July. Baroness Hallett and her team did not miss their targets. The first Module was an examination of the extent to which as a country we were or were not prepared for a pandemic. The resounding answer was that we singularly were not but more than that that there was a complacency that we were better prepared than most. As the public health specialist Prof Devi Sridhar from Edinburgh University opined last weekend:

“the UK government failed in its basic responsibility to its citizens of keeping them safe. The UK had too many preventable deaths, not only from Covid, but also from the shutdown of health services and a long lockdown that would have been unnecessary had public health systems been in place.”

We prepared for the wrong pandemic and the Inquiry has called for ‘fundamental reform of the UK government and devolved nations’ preparedness for civil emergencies.’

Anyone involved in the world of social care before and during the pandemic cannot but agree with Lady Hallet and her findings. We saw the consequences first hand. Her recommendations make it clear that co-ordination, communication and critical whole system planning, and engagement are necessary to avoid any future disaster from happening.

Since her report there have been a number of articles considering the extent to which we are better or worse prepared for another pandemic and the likelihood of which we may need to face that reality. If some, like Sridhar are right, not least around avian flu (H5N1) and its growing threat to human health, then preparing for the future is critical. And that’s what worries me.

Hallett makes 10 clear recommendations and at their heart is a call for the simplification of pandemic planning and response. Planning exercises should be held every three years, and their results reported to the public, as well as the criticality of identifying at risk groups and to avoid a sense of ‘group think.’ All absolutely spot on, in my opinion.

The extent to which frontline social care providers and organisations from the independent and third sector were kept away from the planning table was appalling before and in many instances during the pandemic. I have said as much during evidence I have already given to the UK and Scottish Covid Inquiries. But far from learning those lessons I fear we continued and are continuing to embed poor practice which is at risk of repeating the errors and tragedies of the recent past.

The Scottish Government set up a body called the ‘Standing Committee on Pandemic Preparedness’ in the spring of 2022 to learn the lessons and to better prepare and plan for any future pandemic.

Its terms of reference stated that its membership would:

‘include scientific and technical experts from fields including public health, epidemiology, virology, behavioural sciences, global health, medicine, veterinary medicine, zoonoses and statistical modelling. In addition to independent experts, members may be clinicians and officials from the Scottish Government and associated agencies, selected for their role in pandemic preparedness and response.’

This body has met on numerous occasions and published an interim report late in 2022.

At the time of its establishment, I bemoaned the fact that yet again who was missing from the table? – the social care delivery sector. How can we possibly identify risk and embed lessons unless those most impacted are present? With due respect to the distinguished scientists, clinicians, medics and academics – they are the same groups of individuals (in some cases literally so) who were engaged in the planning processes which Hallett has highlighted as inadequate.

Sadly, I am convinced that we are less prepared in Scotland to deal with a pandemic in the future than we even were in 2020 – and I know I am not alone in that analysis. I say so because amongst other reasons if frontline social care delivery voices are not present at the table, the voices of those who support and care for our older citizens and people who require care and support, and indeed informal carers and those supported individuals themselves, then we are only ever going to get part of the picture and at a distance. We are walking blindly but even more shamefully deliberately into a new chaos.

Hallett’s insights must be fully heard and at their core is the critical engagement and involvement of all not least the social care sector and avoidance of the dominance of the usual suspects and exclusionary governmental practice in planning and resilience – a theme which I have no doubt will become repetitive in all her future reports. Partnership does not happen by proxy it requires presence.

The second area I want to reflect on was my attendance at two meetings to contribute to the surge and winter planning process in Scotland.

Last October in a blog I bemoaned the fact that the third and independent sector had not been included in the planning for the Scottish Government Winter Plan. Positively at least someone has heard and in the week that has passed I have attended a deep dive with colleagues and also a fuller meeting which Scottish Government hosted with a range of providers and stakeholders from the care home and homecare sector. Listening and a desire to include was certainly present albeit that we still have concerns that the planning is premised on a myopic concentration on issues relating to the acute NHS sector such as delayed discharge and avoidable admissions, rather than the critical issues facing the social care sector. But credit where it is due, and I hope Scottish Government and most importantly Ministers will listen to the constructive contributions from the third and independent sector as we approach winter and periods of ‘surge’. Real partnership certainly involves listening but it requires hearing resulting in action rather than avoidance.

The reason why such listening and partnership working is all the more urgent as we prepare for winter was laid bare on Thursday.

On that day a report from the Audit Commission was published. I have read many a report from the Commission and its sister body Audit Scotland over the years, but few have been as direct and damning as this one. It is an exploration of the financial robustness of Scotland’s Integration Joint Boards and the fiscal working behind our integrated health and social care partnerships. Its sections review the workforce, commissioning and performance. It makes it clear that community health and social care face rising unmet need and that ‘managing the crisis is taking priority over prevention due to the multiple pressures facing the bodies providing these services.’

Its findings resonant strongly with the experience of social care providers in care home and homecare services across Scotland around which I have often commented in this blog.

We particularly recognise the analysis which highlights that the workforce is under immense pressure, and organisations are facing acute challenges of recruiting and retaining staff.

The experience of constricted budgets, the demand to make savings and the consequential impact this has had on the ability of citizens to access necessary care and support are all mirrored in the report’s findings.

The Report rightly illustrates the way in which private and third sector providers find that council commissioning rates are insufficient to deliver social care and support and residential, personal and nursing care, and pay expenses such as staff, training and overheads.

The social care sector in Scotland is in a deep and unsustainable crisis, and this Report highlights why that is the case.

More positively the Report contains some case studies which evidence innovative and more effective ways of commissioning and procuring services, even in straightened economic circumstances. To name but two the Granite Care Consortium and the Fife Care Collaborative show how we can do things better.  What these new ways of working have in common is an emphasis on trust-built relationships, all professionals listening to one another, and all stakeholders actively involved in sharing mutual priorities.

The time ahs long passed whether in pandemic planning, winter preparation or the actual day to day delivery of social care in an integrated system for us to play at partnership and conjure up the illusion of collaboration. We urgently need to remove the shackles of self-interest and defensiveness, move away from the ‘it’s aye been done like this’ mantras and to seriously roll up our sleeves and work together for all the citizens of Scotland.

That only happens when the third and independent sectors and their representatives are in the room, at the table and empowered to contribute, rather than being kept outside.

Unless we all get around the table and spend as much time working together rather than seeking to cut an already vulnerable social care sector and its services to the bone, we will continue collectively to fail our citizens.

As the advocate and author Helen Keller once wrote: : “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”

Donald Macaskill