I have literally been all over the place in the week that has just passed. It started with me joining colleagues in Ireland and hearing from the Irish Minister for Older People and Health about their pandemic experience in care homes and in the community as part of the Five Nations Care Forum. Also, at that Forum the delegates from various national care associations were able to share reports on what was happening in their jurisdictions and to talk about what were the challenges they were experiencing. Then on Wednesday I had the very real privilege of attending ‘Devoted and Disgruntled’ which was an Open Space event which brought together some 60 or so frontline carers, managers and others to share their insights on the present and future realities facing social care in Scotland from the perspective of the frontline worker. It was an inspiring day with great conversation, a sharing of ideas, support on emotional issues and a real and tangible sense of determination that the voice of social care needed to be heard in the din and noise of debate.

Throughout the week therefore issues to do with the frontline workforce have been uppermost in my mind. Chief amongst those has been the sense in which it feels that we are on a burning platform at the moment. As our politicians look into their telescopes to spy the glorious new land on the horizon called the National Care Service those working on the ground feel we are at a point of collapse and disintegration. Never mind the dream you are saying let’s deal with the real world. Nowhere is that disconnect between reality and the challenges being faced today in social care and a desire for future reform and new beginning more starkly visible than in the manifestoes of our political parties.

Just in case like so many in the general population you had failed to notice we have an election on Thursday coming (5^th), I had hoped that given the trauma facing social care not least as a result of latest waves, massive cost of living increases,  experienced staff leaving the sector because of emotional trauma and lack of value, levels of absence and sickness the like of which most of us have never seen, real recruitment and retention issues, huge increases in fuel stopping people going to work, and energy rises which are crippling care homes especially in rural areas  – given all that, that the present realities of social care would be front and central in all the debates we are hearing. But instead, deafening silence or at least whispers – so I have had a look on your behalf at what the parties are saying about social care, and most directly, the crisis that the whole social care system is enduring at this time.

Don’t hold your breath – because they are not saying much at all.  Or should I say they are saying a lot but without real costing, analysis, or grounding. I have put links so you can read them yourself but a brief summary:

The SNP Manifesto not surprisingly goes big on the National Care Service, underlining previous commitments to ensuring people who use services are at the heart of re-design, articulates that local accountability will still happen and that SNP councillors will be closely involved. It recognises the contribution and value of both paid and unpaid carers during the pandemic and the need to ensure enhanced pay and conditions. See SNP Local Elections Manifesto 2022 by HinksBrandwise – Issuu

The Scottish Conservatives argue for a local health and social care service with a sharp critique of what they see as centralisation of services. They talk about creating a Local Care Service, ending out of area placements, ethical commissioning, investment in staff and applying funding to frontline delivery. They also mention the need to re-focus on choice through Self-directed Support.  See Back to Normality (scottishconservatives.com)

The Scottish Greens emphasise supporting social  care staff to make sustainable travel choices, call for frontline carers to receive £15 an hour, that workers are paid for travel between jobs and fair work practices become embedded. They also talk of local delivery and valuing care staff as well as unpaid carers. See Manifesto LE2022 WEB.pdf (greens.scot)

Scottish Labour affirms that good quality care is crucial to our wellbeing (though disappointingly it characterises one of the roles of social care as alleviating pressure on the NHS). An emphasis on people being able to live life to the full potential sits alongside a statement that this will need more than a name change or structural reform.  It states, ‘It is time that we treat health and care like one system.’ The Manifesto calls for a £15 an hour minimum for carers; collective bargaining and regulator registration for workers to be paid for by Government not the worker. It argues for free residential care for the over 65s; an end to care charging; a national unpaid carers strategy, increased public provision and an end to marketisation of care. See  LocalGovManifesto2022.pdf (scottishlabour.org.uk)

A quick read of the manifestoes shows some real commonality and shared emphasis – on fair work, on proper remuneration, on giving choice and maintaining local influence etc. But for those of us who are somewhat long in the tooth in terms of our social care aspirations – have we not heard so much of this before? I am not at all convinced that given local authorities are the primary commissioners of social care that in these diverse manifestoes we are witnessing the level of ambition, practical resolve and real innovation needed to deal with the current crisis never mind crate a vibrant, visionary social care system for the future. And that is said with the deepest of respect for the motivation and commitment of so many in our political parties.

The conversations I have held and heard in the last week across nations and communities tell me a story of people who use and work in social care who are tired of platitudinal promises and lofty aspirations, they want change, and they want it yesterday not in some distant utopian dream-state. We need to radically change the way we prioritise social care and we start that by recognising its massive economic and societal contribution to our communities. I do not get the sense of that value in any of these documents rather it is a set of bland promises without root in reality.  The sheer lack of proper fiscal allocation or any analysis of the true resource gap between what we deliver now and what is needed is deeply problematic. We need to recognise that our structures and systems will not work into the future – we will simply not have enough workers even if they are well paid and rewarded to deliver social care as we know it today.  And we cannot simply depend upon family and informal carers who are already well beyond breaking point. How are we going to ensure dignified, rights-based care for a population where most of them will be older and will  be the users of support services when there is a declining working age (and therefore tax paying) population? How will we ensure real choice and not a monolithic offer which strips the social out of care and delivers a clinical emergency response only? So many big questions which are not getting even starter answers.

At the very least please go out and vote on Thursday – social care should be the dominant issue of the moment, the fact it is not is as much of a concern as the rhetoric of political emptiness we so often hear.

Donald Macaskill