A Lifetime Of Care
For too long, social care has been the neglected partner to the NHS.
The contribution of carers is not properly recognised and too many are struggling to make ends meet. People are forced to sell their homes to pay for their or their relatives’ care. The system is broken.
The National Care Service failed due to a lack of ambition – structural adjustments will not deliver the radical change Scotland needs.
The Scottish Greens’ vision for social care is a system which is free at the point of need, where no one is forced into poverty due to their care needs. As a first step, we will end non-residential care charges. We will gradually end the outsourcing of social care to private companies by seeking opportunities to bring private care homes into public or community ownership, for example by supporting local councils to purchase failing care homes.
We acknowledge the need for people to have choice over their care however, and we will recognise the third sector as an equal partner in the delivery of social care and ensure they receive fair funding.
We want to see parity between health and social care and a truly integrated, joined up system which recognises the incredible contribution of paid and unpaid carers. We will invest in our workforce and raise the wage of social care workers as a priority.
- Work with councils and health boards to identify the immediate funding boost required to meet their most pressing demands, providing the breathing space needed to collectively identify a sustainable model for funding and delivering social care in an era of constantly increasing demand.
- End non-residential care charges as an immediate priority.
- Transfer failing care homes into public or community ownership so that the Scottish care home estate is transferred out of private ownership over time.
- Introduce a £15 per hour minimum wage for social care, and ensure this increases annually with inflation at minimum.
- Introduce collective sectoral bargaining across social care, starting with trade union recognition, to ensure workers are represented.
- Guarantee improved terms and conditions for workers, and an end to zero-hour and precarious contracts to provide wage and job security.
- Introduce ethical commissioning and end competitive tendering to ensure that care services are being provided on the basis of their quality, rather than ‘value for money’.
- Guarantee all unpaid carers can fully benefit from their right to a break by establishing a national task force to oversee a national short breaks improvement plan, and by ensuring there is sufficient investment to deliver this right.
- Introduce health checks and access to flexible healthcare appointments for unpaid carers.
- Deliver pay parity between NHS and social care nurses.
- Deliver fair funding for the third sector, including sufficient, multi-year funding from the Scottish Government, and ensure this approach is embedded across all public sector funders.
- Call on the UK Government to reimburse Scottish third sector organisations for the cost of increased employer NICs, which are currently estimated at £75 million per year.