Scottish Care expresses its deep disappointment and frustration at the glaring omission of clear and targeted support for social care in the Scottish Budget. Despite record investment headlines, this budget has failed to address the urgent sustainability challenges facing the social care sector.
While the Scottish Government has pledged £21 billion for health and social care, the lack of ring-fenced funding for social care services and their workforce highlights a disconnect from the real needs of the sector. Social care providers are already at breaking point, grappling with rising costs, including the significant burden of National Insurance increases, which remain unaddressed. These additional financial pressures will force many care providers to reduce services or close altogether, leaving vulnerable individuals without essential care.
Without a robust and sustainable social care sector, the pressure on the NHS and other services will only escalate. The lack of specific detail and ringfenced funding leads us to conclude that this yet more resource for the NHS without a clear prioritising of funding for social care and its workforce.
The Budget commits to £125 million for delivering the Real Living Wage for social care workers by April 2025. Whilst welcome, this is just one element in meeting the true cost of care. Measures to further progress ethical commissioning, recognise pay differentials and address significant funding shortfalls, alongside urgent relief to mitigate the impact of National Insurance increases on social care employers, are essential to securing the future of the sector. Yet, they remain conspicuously absent from this budget.
The omission is not just a policy failure; it is a profound injustice to the thousands of carers, care providers, and individuals who rely on social care every day. Scottish Care calls on the Scottish Government to urgently revisit its priorities, provide the necessary funding and structural reforms, and take immediate steps to alleviate the damaging impact of rising employer costs. The time for action is now.
Dr Donald Macaskill said:
“This Scottish Budget is even more disappointing than we feared it would be. Scottish Care called for a budget that cares. This is a budget that kills. It will kill any reassurance that the Scottish Government truly values social care, and it will kill essential community services which are forced to close and leave workers without employment. But ultimately, it will kill people. People are dying because they can’t get the social care they need. I hear of services that will need to close and make staff redundant by next week. This is not good enough.
“The Cabinet Secretary for Finance in Parliament this afternoon said that social care funding is absolutely vital if we are going to tackle delayed discharge and look at the system as a whole across the NHS and social care. Yet this budget represents a continued absolute obsessional focus on the NHS that completely fails to learn the basic lesson that if social care is not able to continue, the NHS and all its targets and priorities are going to fail too. Focus on pay for social care workers becomes meaningless if there is not a sustainable sector for them to work in. The Government needs to listen to the sector and act now.”
Ends
