It’s been a busy week in the world of technology, data and social care in Scotland. I managed that rare thing of attending the whole of a conference event and to listen to some insightful and interesting speakers. The event was the annual Holyrood Digital Health and Care Technology event. It brought together hundreds of delegates from the health, social care, technology, and data sectors to talk about the priorities of the moment, hear about some amazing innovations and be suitably challenged to think creatively and with imagination. It also combined an Awards evening which celebrated the cutting edge of excellence across Scotland in health and social care. I was honoured to have been one of the judges at an occasion where every nominee really was a winner.

Inevitably one leaves such an experience with a head full of thoughts and feelings, some of which were conflicting and contradictory. I want to share a few of them in this brief blog.

One of the key moments in the two days was the launch of the Scottish Government’s latest data strategy.  In many senses the title of this joint document with local government body COSLA says it all – ‘greater access, better insight, improved outcomes.’ The aims are clear and aspirational and are well articulated within a strategy which hopes to enable a better health and social care experience by the means of an ethical and human rights based use of data. The focus on autonomy and citizen ownership is laudable. The conference contained a lot of debate around data and how valuable our personal story through data was in our achievement of change and progress and yet along with many I was uncomfortable about the extent to which the disparity between the worlds of social care and health were highlighted in much of the debate around data and its use. My colleague Nicola Cooper who was also at the event articulated this in a succinct and prescient manner in a tweet yesterday where she said:

“‘Something has been troubling me. Data, data, data…….mentioned 10,564 times (felt like) at #digihealthcare2023 Conference… So are we saying that Social Care is less mature in its use of data, compared to health?’ The premise being it is…I’m not sure I agree. Here’s why.Social Care data is collected over & over, in different formats, to please different masters, and shared routinely for scrutiny & oversight, scrutiny & oversight (yes, I know I am repeating myself). It invokes negative + disempowering associations…Task driven, de-professionalising, risk averse, overwhelm – get it? Good data, often qualitative, helps with person-led high-quality care. It’s there but buried under the weight of reporting + regulation…. Data is the new gold at the end of the rainbow – always out of touch.

This is where maturity lies. In data driven innovation. Grass roots, by those closest to the challenge who are the most likely to know how to do better – improvement, service redesign, innovation… Will social care achieve data maturity is less of the question than IF social care in its current state is sustainable? (hint, the answer is NO).”

The social care sector has an abundance of rich often qualitative data, and this is immeasurably useful for the improvement of the individual experience of citizens and for the benefit of the whole health and care system but it is only useful if there is an adequacy of priority given to social care providers and staff to enable them to be the harvesters and users of such data in a way which is sustainable and beneficial to the rights and lives of the individual. It is only useful if the data tells the whole story and if social care is enabled to be autonomous and unique in its articulation and not be forced to utilise a data dialect which is not fit for context or purpose – thus the huge significance of the narrative as well as the number within data. Qualitative data matters as much to the outcome of a story as quantitative measures! Yet again the imbalance in strategic priorities between health and social care illustrates the failure of a whole system approach within Scotland.

My second observation of the conference was the extent to which there was a continual reference to the need to develop a digitally trained and competent workforce. At Scottish Care we are no strangers to the necessity of equipping our frontline carers with the tools to enable them to maximise the benefits of technology and digital in order to achieve the best possible outcomes and lives for the people who are supported in their own homes and in our care homes. The Care Technologist programme is an adventurous and innovative approach to ensuring that frontline social care is at the forefront in the challenge of championing that people are enabled to use technology to maximise their personal control and choice in their lives and in their care support. But if such innovation is to become mainstream, it demands an adequacy of resource priority to ensure our care workforce of the present and future is properly equipped, supported, and encouraged to undertake these progressive approaches. And all this at a time when social care providers are struggling to recruit and to retain frontline staff because of the embarrassingly shameful rates of pay which are predicated on inadequate Scottish Government pay awards. You cannot build and equip a technologically confident workforce on the deficit scale of reward and remuneration. There is a massive risk that the future of social care technology and digital usage in Scotland will be a shameful lost opportunity because of a lack of investment in and priority for the care workforce.

My next observation relates to the criticality of cyber and data security. After landing home after the event, I got an alert along with many parents at my local school around on-line security and threat. In this instance it was related to concerns which had been raised around the potential for cyberbullying, grooming or unwanted contact through the Roblox chat functions.  Roblox allows users to create and share their own games, as well as play other users’ games. As any user can create a game, an individual may create or invite a user to join a game that contains adult themes that will expose the child to content inappropriate for their age. No-one with a young child in their family will be unfamiliar with such warnings, and concerns – the world we inhabit is as full of technological threat as it is with digital promise and positivity. To ensure that those who work in and use social care are properly protected and aware both at an organisational and individual level is a massive challenge. This coming week (27^th February to the 5^th March) is Cyber Security Scotland Week which is an important initiative to make sure that we are all much more aware of the critical issues of cyber and online security. This is a fundamental element of ensuring our futures are one of positivity rather than abuse. The future promise of technology not least in the sensitive arena of health and social care will rise or fall on the extent that we prioritise both awareness of and investment in the protection of data and the development of our cyber security.

My last technology observation for the week relates to something which might seem antithetical to everything that has gone before and to a generally positivist approach to tech. It is simply that we must recognise that technology and digital are tools and not destinations. Like many people since the pandemic my world has become dominated by online meetings and Teams calls. In a very real sense attending a physical event is a rare treat and pleasure – it has become unusual for many of us to be out there with people in the way in which we used to be. This has had many benefits – we probably get more work done, we are more inclusive of those who live and work at a distance and we have managed to maximise participation and engagement in so many diverse ways. But – there is a cost. That cost is one I think we increasingly both individually and collectively need to challenge until we get to a point of healthier balance. The cost is personal interaction, dialogue, and honest communication. Online meetings allow those who organise and chair, those who lead and manage to control what happens, they drive out the directness of eye contact, the positivity of physical presence and the benefit of side exchange and networking. I am convinced in most meetings and group interactions they stunt innovative contribution and creativity. We have- not least in some governmental and statutory circles – reached a stage at which I am very worried about the way in which honest and healthy exchange and debate are being shut down by the dominance of virtual meetings and the absence of physical in-person interaction. It would be unfortunate in the extreme if the benefits of technology ended up leading to a situation of disingenuous exchange and the loss of freedom for speech and robust and honest contribution. I just wonder if that is the direction in so much of our working lives in which we are moving.

Enjoy your tech week.

Donald Macaskill

There are times when you might feel the struggles and obstacles you are enduring are unique to your own circumstances and situation. To be honest it sometimes feels like that in the world of social care in Scotland – that our challenges are unique and peculiar. But they are not. And both this week and in the last month it has become even clearer that there is a shared global set of concerns around social care and ageing but equally important a collective international desire and focus to do something about them. My reason for saying so is because of two reports which have been published in the last month.

The first is from the United Nations Department for Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) which in mid-January published its biennial flagship report that ‘aims to assess the world’s social situation by identifying emerging trends of international concern ‘. The World Social Report 2023 focuses on population ageing and the challenges and opportunities it brings as countries strive to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

It is called ‘Leaving No One Behind in an Ageing World,’ and takes its title from the commitment that as the world strives to achieve environmental sustainability that no-one especially the most vulnerable would be left behind. For the purposes of this report, it focuses on older age. It does so by celebrating the reality that we have made huge global strides in advancing health and older age but states quite baldly that there is much still to do to reap the benefit of this ‘demographic dividend.’

The report argues that older persons should be able to continue working for as long as they desire and are able, and it calls for ‘flexible retirement policies with guaranteed universal minimum benefits; eliminating barriers to older people’s participation in the workforce; and supporting learning and skills development throughout the life course.’

But it also advocates for a robust renewal of social care and health supports for our ageing population, stating that:

‘So far, public spending in most countries has not been sufficient to cover the growing demand for long-term care. The average expenditure by countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) was 1.5 per cent of GDP in 2019, down from 1.7 per cent in 2017. Insufficient funding means caregivers are undervalued, underpaid, and inadequately trained and often work in difficult conditions. A shortage of well-trained caregivers leads to poor quality care. Many countries, even wealthy ones, continue to rely on informal services by paid or unpaid caregivers.’

The report is well worth a read as it articulates a clear link between the economic success of a country and the degree to which it robustly addresses age discrimination and disadvantage. And when it talks about age discrimination it is explicitly referring to the discrimination against older age which is a global shame.

The second report which has highlighted for me our shared global challenge and potential came out a few days ago. It is entitled ‘Long Term Care: A Call for Action on a Global Scale.’ I know this work much better because I had the privilege over the last year of being part of the international group of writers who contributed to its development. That process and the conversations and discussions that were involved showed me first hand just how many shared concerns and solutions we share with one another across the world.

The paper makes many of the same arguments as the UN report but is primarily focussed on the aged care and social care sector and its condition across the world. It is a direct call to the governments of the world to act to address what is effectively an ageing emergency – one just as significant and challenging as our environmental emergency. It is a call to action to ensure that growing old is something which continues to uphold dignity, human worth and value, that celebrates individual autonomy and choice, and which enshrines the human rights of all regardless of age or capacity.  It states quite clearly that positive ageing does not happen by accident but through a clear strategic focus, prioritisation and planning which values ageing at its heart.

It especially states that we are globally, not just in Scotland, faced with very real challenges in terms of the declining numbers of caregivers and insufficient government support for services for older adults at the very same time as there are more and more older people requiring a greater level of support to remain independent, autonomous and valued. It also calls for a radical re-imagining of how we support people in older age, how we value them and how we provide care and support to those who may require it:

“As the aging population grows, there are too many challenges to keep doing things the way we have been doing them in the past decades. Informal family caregivers, who, in every country worldwide play a fundamental role in ensuring older adults’ well-being, are struggling with exhaustion, deteriorating quality of life, and loss of income that feed into negative macroeconomic impacts. We cannot leave this to families alone,” said Jiri Horecky, president European Ageing Network and board chair, the Global Ageing Network. “As the numbers of older adults grow, governments will have no choice but to invest in the supports older adults need, to give them agency and to protect their rights, including the right to long-term care.”

I consider that this international report is of real significance to those of us who care about older age in Scotland. It shows that many of the challenges we are facing in Scotland are global in nature, but it also suggests that the solutions of a better recognised and rewarded workforce, investment in older age care and support, and the innovative use of a human-rights based use of technology are ones we need to build on in Scotland and elsewhere.

If we are to truly ensure that no-one is left behind, we have to raise our heads from the horizon of our local and national concerns to work internationally on shared responses – this is as true of ageing and its potential as much as it is true of the environment and its challenge. Dozens of governments across the globe were presented with the report on Tuesday and I really do hope that they, ours included, will act on its call.

That is why I am delighted that Glasgow will welcome delegates from around the globe in this coming September to debate, talk, share, campaign, create and become active around the issues of ageing and care and support. The Global Ageing Conference will be taking place in the exact spot where COP26 happened – sustainable care and support for our growing ageing human population is as critical to ensuring a sustainable environment as perhaps any other issue. You can find out more details of this event at https://globalageing2023.com/

Both these international reports are appearing at a time when increasingly there is an acceptance of the intimate relationship between ageing and the environment, between celebrating and valuing older age and economic sustainability and success of communities and nations. Sadly, I think Scotland has some way to go to recognise older age as full of potential rather than cost. Scotland’s social care system and its very acute and real challenges can learn much from the insights of other places because there is much more that unites than divides our commonality. But wherever we are in the world the future is one where inescapably older people will increasingly find voice and agency, will demand change and innovation, will demonstrate new ways of being old – I very much hope we have the courage to listen to international voices and learn from global insights because those who are ageing will not allow themselves to be left behind.

Donald Macaskill

Today is the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. As someone who is much more comfortable in the world of arts and literature it may seem an odd theme to reflect upon in my weekly blog. But throughout my life I have come across some amazingly gifted women and girls who have contributed through their careers and writing to the advancement of our scientific knowledge. Yet in virtually each of their stories and careers they have done so despite the barriers and challenges placed in front of them both in terms of attitudes and behaviours, and more explicitly in terms of bias and discrimination. Theirs has without exception been a journey of struggle against the prevalent societal, academic and industry prejudices.

In some senses I belong to a generation where there was an unhealthy presumption when I was at school that science was for the boys and that the arts and other subjects were for the girls.  And I am not that old! This myth of male scientific primacy could not have been more visibly negated than in my own classroom where the girls romped ahead of any male in their environment and to my knowledge at least three of whom went on to do science-based PhDs and have excellent scientific careers. Yet I can still remember a female teacher standing in front of the class and stating without fear of contradiction or embarrassment that “science brains were always ‘male brains because of the way in which we were made”. The pseudo-science of presumption.

Wind on the years and I am sitting in a care home with an older lady who by that stage was in her nineties and bar from some real physical challenges as the result of hip replacement surgery which had not worked as it should have, she was intellectually active and her mind was dynamic and creative. She recounted to me her own experience of frustration with her schooling because despite being the undoubted brightest in a family of three brothers, she never got her chance at pursuing education until she had left school and working all hours and with the support of her young husband, she put herself through university education. She went on to become one of the foremost specialists in her field of immunology. We got to know one another really well but in almost every conversation we had there was both an anger at the barriers she had faced not just at school but in her clinical career simply because she was a woman, and this was combined with a determination that girls and women in the future should not have to endure similar experiences.

Undeniably we have come a long way and there are more women in positions of scientific prominence and as leaders in science and technological industry, but we have considerable distance still to go. The UNESCO and UN-Women led day we celebrate today illustrates the distance to ending such discrimination. It states:

• Women are typically given smaller research grants than their male colleagues and, while they represent 33.3% of all researchers, only 12% of members of national science academies are women.
• In cutting edge fields such as artificial intelligence, only one in five professionals (22%) is a woman.
• Despite a shortage of skills in most of the technological fields driving the Fourth Industrial Revolution, women still account for only 28% of engineering graduates and 40% of graduates in computer science and informatics.
• Female researchers tend to have shorter, less well-paid careers. Their work is underrepresented in high-profile journals, and they are often passed over for promotion.

In order to achieve full and equal access to and participation in science for women and girls, and further achieve gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, we must recognise the challenges we see all around us.

I have written and spoken a lot about technology and how it impacts the world of social care – I hasten to add from an amateur and non-scientific expert stance! As a result, I attend many science and technology conferences and events and what often strikes me is that without exception so much of the most dynamic, original and humanistic inventions and initiatives originate from the work of female developers and scientists – yet so much leadership, presentation and articulation of these is led by men. What is going on there if not healthcare and social care’s own glass ceiling operating against the creativity and imagination of women? As the UN states women remain a minority in ‘digital information technology, computing, physics, mathematics and engineering. These are the fields that are driving the digital revolution and so, many of the jobs of tomorrow.’

Of all the Nobel laureates awarded in physics, chemistry, physiology and medicine 587 (97%) have been given to men and only 20 to women. That strikes me as the arithmetic of bias rather than the science of sense. It is time for those of us in our own spheres of influence such as social care and health care to ensure we continually address the ongoing discrimination against women and girls in technology and science. If we do so we not only work to right an error but to benefit the whole of society by giving space and voice to creativity, innovation, discovery and insight from those who have so much to give. As my old friend in the care home said to me, she had spent her life “dreaming and working to be herself.”

And what better way to end this blog but with the challenge and creative brilliance of Neil Gaiman and his poem ‘The Mushroom Hunters.’:

“The Mushroom Hunters,”

Science, as you know, my little one, is the study

of the nature and behaviour of the universe.

It’s based on observation, on experiment, and measurement,

and the formulation of laws to describe the facts revealed.

In the old times, they say, the men came already fitted with brains

designed to follow flesh-beasts at a run,

to hurdle blindly into the unknown,

and then to find their way back home when lost

with a slain antelope to carry between them.

Or, on bad hunting days, nothing.

The women, who did not need to run down prey,

had brains that spotted landmarks and made paths between them

left at the thorn bush and across the scree

and look down in the bole of the half-fallen tree,

because sometimes there are mushrooms.

Before the flint club, or flint butcher’s tools,

The first tool of all was a sling for the baby

to keep our hands free

and something to put the berries and the mushrooms in,

the roots and the good leaves, the seeds and the crawlers.

Then a flint pestle to smash, to crush, to grind or break.

And sometimes men chased the beasts

into the deep woods,

and never came back.

Some mushrooms will kill you,

while some will show you gods

and some will feed the hunger in our bellies. Identify.

Others will kill us if we eat them raw,

and kill us again if we cook them once,

but if we boil them up in spring water, and pour the water away,

and then boil them once more, and pour the water away,

only then can we eat them safely. Observe.

Observe childbirth, measure the swell of bellies and the shape of breasts,

and through experience discover how to bring babies safely into the world.

Observe everything.

And the mushroom hunters walk the ways they walk

and watch the world, and see what they observe.

And some of them would thrive and lick their lips,

While others clutched their stomachs and expired.

So laws are made and handed down on what is safe. Formulate.

The tools we make to build our lives:

our clothes, our food, our path home…

all these things we base on observation,

on experiment, on measurement, on truth.

And science, you remember, is the study

of the nature and behaviour of the universe,

based on observation, experiment, and measurement,

and the formulation of laws to describe these facts.

The race continues. An early scientist

drew beasts upon the walls of caves

to show her children, now all fat on mushrooms

and on berries, what would be safe to hunt.

The men go running on after beasts.

The scientists walk more slowly, over to the brow of the hill

and down to the water’s edge and past the place where the red clay runs.

They are carrying their babies in the slings they made,

freeing their hands to pick the mushrooms.

From https://allyourprettywords.tumblr.com/post/160240301193/the-mushroom-hunters-neil-gaiman

Donald Macaskill

I’ve never been the victim of racism but have sadly witnessed it and its impact all too often over the years. For over a decade I was involved in delivering programmes of learning and development for organisations and their staff on the issues of equality and diversity. With the distance of time, I often reflect on that experience which frequently felt as if I was pushing a boulder up a steep hill. Often when I was delivering a training course the first period of time involved me engaging in what felt like an evangelical argument to convince folks that what they were about to experience was not the latest fad, was not a tick box exercise and was not pandering to ‘political correctness’ whatever that was understood as meaning. In other words, it was important, meaningful and that it mattered just as much as Health and Safety to Child Protection training. On occasion I had to engage in a more robust and strident defence and set of arguments on how understanding the way you relate to people who might be different to you, whose behaviours, beliefs, or attitudes you may disagree with – was a fundamental part of working in a modern public facing service and indeed being a part of contemporary society. Whether it was a training course delivered to the police or social workers, to a charity or private business, the challenge and resistance to race equality training was almost predictable and sadly familiarly frequent.

These memories often come to the surface when I consider annual events like Race Relations Week which this year runs from the 6th to 10th February. It is a week which ‘unites employees, focuses senior leaders and encourages them to continue their activity and drive race equality all year long.’ It aims to be ‘a catalyst for ongoing change’ in order to ‘galvanise and maximise impact through a nationwide collaboration for real change.’

In the world of social care, the dynamics of race are significant and important. On the one hand social care as a sector whether in care home or homecare employs and attracts more people from Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) backgrounds as an overall proportion of the workforce than many other sectors in Scotland. On the other hand, the sector has frequently struggled with the issues of racism that beset the rest of the population. That is both in terms of direct service experience for worker and resident/service user and the paucity of distinctive provision for minority groups as a report by Rohini Sharma Joshi for Scottish Care argued just before the pandemic.

When I trained people in equality and diversity starting three decades ago, I often used to say that over time the knee-jerk resistance to learning about race or disability, sexual orientation or belief would change naturally and progressively – I really believed that as people encountered difference more often, as fears were allayed, as generations changed then behaviour and attitudes would become more inclusive, non-discriminatory, and mature.

I disappointingly must admit that such optimism was misplaced because sadly I feel the challenge of racism is in some senses as acute in some parts of Scotland today as it has been in the past. It is undeniably true that incidents of overt race hate have become less common, that people who are victims have marginally become more confident in reporting, that previously accepted societal and group racist behaviours and so-called humour are now more likely to be challenged or whispered – and yet there is almost now a subtle underground pervasiveness of outdated attitudes to ethnicity even amongst the young. Racism has become more subtle and calculating but no less dangerous and damaging. And at the same time as I think racism has become more hidden in plain sight the focus of learning, development and challenge has become less critical and much less well-resourced and prioritised by both organisations and government.

That is not to deny or ignore for instance that there have been some good pieces of research and reports in the recent past exploring the disproportionately negative experiences of the Covid pandemic upon the BAME population as a whole and upon health and social care staff in particular. This work should be welcomed advocating as it does for politicians, policy makers, organisations, and leaders to address the inequity of treatment, discrimination in resource allocation and bias within organisations and systems. But I think as well as tackling endemic racism at that macro level as individuals and communities we need to do a whole lot more in terms of personal attitudes and behaviours.

The recent well publicised experience of the acting colleagues of the Scottish actor James McAvoy who experienced direct racism in the streets of Glasgow should shame anyone who cares about that city and its reputation. But the sad truth is – no matter how many carpets we choose to brush reality under – that there are daily experiences of direct racist incidents being perpetrated upon both Scots of long lineage and more recent arrivals every day.

I spoke to a social care provider in the west of Scotland just a few weeks ago – they had successfully recruited staff from Africa and had supported their arrival and transition really well. Yet these young women and men recounted tale upon tale of negative experience – at the hands of the public – bananas thrown at one person on the bus; at the hands of service users – someone point blankly refusing to be supported and cared for by a ‘black woman’ and even incidents where colleagues had ignored or demeaned them. Despite all the support and the best endeavours of managers and supervisors this new workforce were now reporting to peers back home the reality of not being welcomed.

I’ve equally lost count of the number of workers in both clinical and care settings who have recounted to me incidents of subtle and significant racist behaviour both at the hands of patients or residents and from peers and colleagues.

We need to call out racism wherever it exists and to challenge the perfidious nature of it at the hands of those who care and in environments where people should be having their humanity affirmed not demeaned.

It is simply not acceptable to say things are better than they were because they are still not as they should be. As a society as we rightly seek to address and challenge other inequities and disadvantages let us in the week ahead also continue to renew our efforts to challenge hatred and discrimination on the grounds of race and ethnicity. The job is only half done. It is time to care about racism.

The amazing Jackie Kay one of the greatest living poets in Scotland at the current time brilliantly captures the reality of racism in Scotland in her poem, ‘In My Country.’

walking by the waters,

down where an honest river

shakes hands with the sea,

a woman passed round me

in a slow, watchful circle,

as if I were a superstition;

or the worst dregs of her imagination,

so when she finally spoke her words spliced into bars

of an old wheel. A segment of air.

Where do you come from?

‘Here,’ I said, ‘Here. These parts.’

Printed in Scotland’s Makar Jackie Kay: This is still my country, but it needs to change – The Sunday Post

Donald Macaskill.