Paul Marshall, Senior Operations Manager in the West of Scotland, explores whether we value social care in Scotland.
“Whichever one of the first three words we emphasise as we read this question, the spectre of cost doesn’t seem to be too far away. For years, politicians have focused on other issues, and social care did not get much of a look in. When it did, each ‘solution’ looked at how much money the system required, devised a method for raising it, before being dropped as an election neared.
The National Care Service (NCS) is not debated solely in these terms. Born out of the Feeley review of adult social care, which argued that social care should be viewed as an investment in society, rather than a cost, it seems to ask a more fundamental question; what is it that we want?
To rephrase the opening question, do we value people who have a disability? Do we value older people? What kind of society do we want?
These are important questions, and they can be difficult ones once you pass the initial moral impulse. The ambitions for the NCS are considerable: “Our goal is to future-proof the social care sector for generations to come”. Even a cynic would wish for success, especially given the data from the National Records of Scotland which shows that the number of people over 65 is to grow by one third by 2045 (with the number of people between the ages 16-64 declining slightly by 3% in the same period).
People tend to value social care when they need it, only to find that it isn’t there. Eligibility thresholds for services have risen over many years, and families are asked to do more. Tweaking this, and raising that, given future population changes, on top of the current issues facing the sector, do not seem likely to make a difference. So, a whole system approach is what is what is needed, and the NCS offers a chance that has not been offered before. It will be difficult, there will be compromise, and not everyone will be happy with everything.
The challenge is global. In “Osebol” by Marit Kapla, voices from a remote Swedish village are recorded, and I discovered a scenario that many of us will relate to. Marie Bjor, who works in homecare, reflects on the value of having time to stop for a coffee and a chat with one of her clients, noting: “That’s the little drop of life they really want”.
When we work out what we really want, we can proceed with better knowledge of what we value, and the importance of investing in it.”
Find out more about how Carr Gomm is influencing the National Care Service on our Influencing Change page.