Meeting of the Parliament 24 March 2026 [Draft]
The current rates of social care pay are “woefully inadequate”. Those are not my words but those of Donald Macaskill, who is the chief executive of Scottish Care. Let me quantify for members what that means. As a result of those 40,000 hours of unmet need in our communities, 2,000 Scots remain in hospital every night—they are well enough to go home but too frail to do so without a care package. That costs the NHS £1.3 million a day, whereas it would cost a quarter of that to sustain them in their own homes with a care package. All of that causes an interruption in flow, which causes operations to be cancelled and ambulances to be stacked outside accident and emergency units.
When will the Government finally recognise the words of Donald Macaskill, who says:
“I am still frustrated the Scottish Government doesn’t take social care seriously”?