Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)16 February 2021
I congratulate the convener of the Health and Sport Committee and the committee clerks on the pragmatic way in which they managed to ensure that we debated the work that led to our report, which is helpful for us in this debate.
This is an important debate for all of us in the chamber. How we progress from here could make this one of the landmark points in the on-going story of the Scottish Parliament. It goes without saying that anything that we say and do regarding social care comes on the back of a difficult year for everyone, but it has been an especially difficult year for people who have lost a loved one, and for those who work in a sector that has had to deal with difficult and challenging circumstances.
However, there is much in our adult social care system that warrants celebration. Key legislation has been created to support the sector, examples of which are the introduction of self-directed support, the Carers (Scotland) Act 2016 and the Scottish Government’s integrated health and social care agenda, all of which are part of the way forward. We have had challenges along the way in meeting expectations, but nothing worth while is easy. If it was, we would have done it previously.
In September 2020, the Scottish Government announced in its programme for government the review of social care, the report on which we are discussing today. If we have learned anything over the past year, it is that there is a need for change in our social care settings and that there are better ways of working.
I have continually pursued that with health boards when they have come to committee. Recently, they have said that they have found better ways to work with other services over the past year because they have had to do it and it was important that they did so. Those who manage our health boards are correct to say that they have, during this difficult year, found ways to make what appeared to be impossible last year happen this year. The solution tends to be around how they interact with integration joint boards, but they should have been working previously as they work now.
Everyone in Scotland’s NHS and care sector is to be congratulated for the work that they have done. However, whenever board members come to committee and explain what they have achieved this year, I cannot help but ask why it took a worldwide pandemic to make all that work. I know that a crisis can focus people on delivery, but I still find it bizarre that many health boards took so long to understand what was needed.
The independent review of adult social care could not have been published at a more important time. It is a substantial piece of work, and its many recommendations show us a different way forward for providing care. The creation of a national care service has been spoken about by many colleagues in the debate. In my opinion, probably the most important part of the report is on how we take forward the recommendations. Our challenge is to create a robust and deliverable national care service of the type that we all want.
That the establishment of human rights in the approach to social care should incorporate equality should go without saying. However, there should be better support and representation for unpaid carers. I am sure that I am not the only MSP who has had unpaid carers approach them, and who has guided them through the process and tried to get them the support that they need. The report is extremely important in that it provides a road map for making that process better.
Most important is that we are talking about delivering fair work for the workforce, with increasing and more effective investment. For far too long, many women who work in the care sector have been subjected to financial and work-related conditions that are different from those that are afforded to women who work in our national health service. Anything that can balance that anomaly is to be welcomed. Obviously, that will be helped by the proposed shifting of the adult social care model from markets and competition to collaboration, commissioning and procurement practices.
The report also highlights the need to move from old thinking to new thinking. That seems to me to be something that should have been obvious to us all.
However, this is day 1, so we all need, as the debate progresses, to work together to ensure that we create the service that we want, so that we are not having the same debate in future years.
17:00