New Scottish Care Blog: National Director, Karen Hedge

This week I gave evidence at the Health and Sport Committee on the proposed Health and Care Staffing Bill, specifically in relation to Part 3 of the Bill relating to social care. Last week, colleagues from the NHS presented their perspective. Whilst the intention of the Bill may be well-founded, the unintended consequences of introducing it could have significant limiting effects for the sector. Social Care in Scotland has come a long way to begin to create the conditions required for improvement and innovation; you can see this in our policy such as the Health and Social Care Standards introduced earlier this year, our legislation such as the Self Directed Support (Scotland) Act, and in our practice such as the new methods of inspection implemented by the Care Inspectorate. I am proud to represent an ever-evolving sector which retains at its heart an asset-based individualised approach to providing care that is grounded in Human Rights. As human beings, and as a society, our wants, needs and wishes change, and this means that to be able to meet the needs of our older citizens, and others who access care and support, we must be flexible to those demands. On top of this, the market itself is ever-changing as we are living longer and in times of austerity, we need to be able to think differently about how care and support is delivered. The biggest concern that I have is that the purpose of legislation is to freeze its components and the proposal to enshrine the use of a tool in statute puts at risk several things:

  • It does not allow for professional flexibility, or for a multi-disciplinary approach, or the development of the new models of care and workforce development that the sector so desperately needs to be sustainable.
  • It does not consider significant parties to the process such as commissioners who would need to respond to the potential increased demand in resource, or, social workers, who would need to be available to assess those who access care and support in order to provide the data for the staffing tool.
  • There is a real risk of the legislation directing resource, meaning that limited funding may be directed towards meeting staffing requirements, or towards meeting the potential additional administrative burden upon a sector who already have to report both to the Care Inspectorate and to their commissioners.
  • Most significantly however is the potentially devastating impact upon the recruitment and retention crisis that the sector currently faces. The SSSC workforce data report published last month shows a Stability index of 77.1% that means almost a quarter of staff are changing roles or leaving. Our own data shows that more people leave than enter the sector within their first 6 months of employment, and that the nursing vacancy rate is currently at 32%. This cannot continue, as evidenced by last weeks headline news that 19 care homes closed because they cannot recruit nurses. We must too bear in mind that last year some of our providers were paying £1200 per night for an agency nurse, and that whilst the number of nursing agencies has increased by 18% in the last year, there is no greater pool to draw from. Creating legislation does not in itself create nurses.

The whole issue that the Bill has been created to address needs a solution that is co-produced from across the health and social care landscape, offering opportunity and flexibility to free up systems and allow the optimisation of the workforce through a multi-disciplinary approach, with career pathways which value our staff and enable them to progress, and to allow for the use of technology and other solutions which the National Workforce Planning Group may already be exploring or which may not even exist yet. A care home is not a clinical setting, it its by its very definition, a home. People who live there are surrounded by their own possessions and sometimes their furniture and décor. And as is also the case for our care at home workforce, they build relationships with those who both live and work there. We need to enable our skilled workforce across the sector to exercise their expertise and professional judgement and allow them time to just ‘Be’ with the people they support. Fundamentally, the Bill in its current format puts that at risk. Our evidence is in, next week the regulatory bodies will be presenting, and thereafter the committee will make their decision on how to proceed. Every single vote will count. #careaboutcare You can watch live or pre-recorded on SPTV  and you can see our submission here Karen Hedge National Director, Scottish Care

Last Updated on 13th December 2019 by donald.macaskill