The Scottish Government have today (14 Dec) published details of the draft Scottish Budget for 2018/19.
Scottish Care has, in the days before the draft Budget, highlighted the need for the Scottish Government to prioritise the older persons social care sector in any funding decisions. In so doing we have stated the immediate crisis that the care at home and care home sector is currently experiencing. With fundamental problems of recruitment and retention, of resource allocation and sustainability, we have stated very explicitly that the ability of providers at current resource levels to continue to deliver care to some of our most vulnerable citizens is very much in question.
Whilst we acknowledge the additional £66 million allocated to Local Authorities to deliver on some elements of social care, we are extremely disappointed that the Finance Secretary has chosen not to sufficiently prioritise social care by more substantial assistance. Our pleas have fallen on deaf ears and we have been unable to convince our MSPs that the care of our citizens matters sufficiently to fund it adequately.
Dr Donald Macaskill, CEO of Scottish Care commented:
“This draft Budget is deeply disappointing and its decisions are shameful. When will our politicians wake up to the reality that we are sleep walking into the breakdown of quality support and care of our older citizens across our communities? They have failed to heed the warnings and regretfully it is not they who will suffer but the older person isolated at home, reduced to even less frequent visits; it is the worker whose dedicated care that will be pushed into ever shorter and undignified time slots; it is those who simply will not get care because the money has run out; it is the family member who already stretched in their caring will be expected to care beyond capacity.
I hope our elected representatives will in the coming days and weeks speak to those lives, I hope they will find arguments based in humanity rather than finance, to answer why they have chosen not to care about care.”
#careaboutcare
