Meeting of the Parliament 29 January 2025
Yes, I do, and I could list the names of those who signed the letter on that subject that was sent by the First Minister and the president of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. The wealth of experience and dedicated commitment of those signatories from civic Scotland underline the need across health, social care and all elements of public service to see the issue being resolved at source.
Looking ahead, I believe that the draft budget provides strong foundations for the improvements that we all want and need to be delivered, including our commitment to providing funding to enable social care workers to continue to be paid at least the real living wage.
The budget represents a package of investment to reduce the immediate pressures across the NHS and to speed up the rate at which individuals can be treated by delivering an additional 150,000 planned care procedures over the coming year.
The investment will also shift the balance of care from acute services to the community by expanding the hospital at home service, opening more frailty units and ensuring that a greater proportion of new NHS funding goes to primary and community care. Furthermore, it will enable use of innovation—digital and technological—to improve access to care.
Our NHS workforce is central to delivering all those improvements, and we simply cannot afford to underestimate the role that social care staff will play in enabling and realising the ambitions.