Hansard

I thank our wonderful care staff, who have done incredible work in often extremely difficult conditions throughout the pandemic. They have been a source of care—obviously—support and comfort to many care home residents during a distressing and frightening time.

The issue is an important one that we cannot debate too often, and I thank the Labour Party for bringing it to the chamber.

It is clear that errors have been made during the pandemic. Although it is essential that a public inquiry provides more detailed answers, we are in the second wave, and learning must take place now.

The Scottish Greens have been calling for regular Covid-19 testing of front-line health and care workers since April. Participation in a Covid care staff testing scheme is one of the conditions that care homes have to meet before they can resume visiting, so robust and regular testing is vital to ensure that those who have been isolated in care homes can once again see their loved ones.

As the motion states:

“more than 200 days have passed since care homes began locking down in March”.

During the lockdown, families have been unable to grieve, to celebrate or to share words of comfort together. The psychological toll that that has taken on residents of care homes and their families is immense. The motion also rightly notes the significant impact of isolation on

“those with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia”.

Although care home residents undoubtedly need to be protected from the potentially fatal harm of Covid, we have to strive to lessen the psychological harm and to maintain dignity and quality of life.

Regular testing of care workers has now been delivered, but there have been reports of long waits for test results. Only two weeks ago, a Unison poll indicated that half of care home workers had not been tested for the coronavirus.

Care-at-home workers also provide vital care to people who are often very vulnerable, and they must not be overlooked. Labour’s motion states:

“testing should be available to everyone involved in providing care”.

I could not agree more.

Scottish Care has described support for care at home as

“the Achilles heel of our pandemic response”

and has said that it has been

“insufficiently planned for nationally and locally.”

We cannot afford to neglect that area of the care sector. That is evidenced by the stark warning that Scottish Care issued about a potential link between excess deaths in the community and

“the removal or reduction of homecare supports as a pandemic response”.

A report that the Care Inspectorate published this month detailed the impact that the removal of such support has had on service users. It said:

“reduced community access, due to lockdown, resulted in a loss of daily routines and predictability”

and an inevitable rise in stress levels.

More widely, Inclusion Scotland conducted a survey in July that showed that 79 per cent of respondents who were in receipt of social care support prior to lockdown had lost some or all of their social care support during March and that just over a third of respondents who had had their support reduced or stopped were still being asked to pay care charges to their local authority.

Covid-19 has exposed the fundamental flaws in the care system and the devastating consequences for disabled people and unpaid carers. Engender says that

“As many as 39% of unpaid carers are providing more care due to local services reducing or closing as a result of Covid-19”

and that

“Survey data published for Carers Week 2020 suggests that there are now as many as 1.1 million unpaid carers in Scotland, of which 61% are women.”

Any reintroduction of care packages will have to take into account the significant damage that may have been inflicted on people’s physical and mental health as a result of the pandemic as well as the disproportionate effect on women, who continue to take on the majority of care work.

Action is also needed on staff wellbeing. Many of our care workers will be exhausted after the trials of the past six months, and workforce issues are exacerbating that. In Scotland,

“20% of registered care services report having nursing vacancies and the level is significantly higher in care homes for older people, with 46% of these services reporting nursing vacancies.”

The Royal College of Nursing tells us that

“registered nurses working on the frontline in care homes are feeling the impact of these nursing shortages daily and this strain has been amplified during the COVID 19 pandemic”

and that urgent

“Action is needed to deliver fair pay, terms and conditions for registered nurses and other nursing staff employed within care homes.

We have often discussed the on-going undervaluing of care workers in the chamber, but it bears frequent repetition. Care work is essential for our society and economy, but it remains unappreciated and underpaid. There is a vast mismatch between the value of care and the support that carers receive. Much social care in this country is still done by volunteers: partners, children, parents, friends and neighbours all contribute to helping those who are in need of care. Three out of five of us in the chamber will become carers at some point in our lives, yet the value of the work that carers do is not fully recognised. Carers’ benefits do not recognise the immense contribution that is made by unpaid carers. Better conditions are needed for both professional care workers and unpaid carers who are attending to family and friends. Social care workers do hard and vital work in people’s homes and care homes in every community, but it remains one of the lowest paid sectors, fuelling the gender pay gap.

The Scottish Green Party stood on a manifesto commitment to pay all care and support workers significantly above the living wage, financed by progressive taxation, not by care charges. We have also long called for improved working conditions for social care workers such as paid travel time, sick leave, skills training and an end to zero-hours contracts. More than half of working age carers juggle paid employment—