The Care Reform Bill Stage 3 Member Update
The Act still requires Royal Assent and a date for enactment. The Bill involved a sustained effort across the Scottish social services sector over the last five years since the independent Review of Adult Social Care Services was published. Find below a summary of what has passed. There are a number of new duties and rights that will affect your work.
Key changes for social workers in the new Act include
The creation of the National Social Work Agency and the establishment of the role of Chief Social work Adviser in legislation were clear asks of the SASW membership. We are pleased the Scottish Government has supported this ask throughout the recent changes to the Bill. This new Agency should increase the visibility and influence of the National Chief Social Work Adviser. We hope this will support the Scottish Government to better align, phase and implement their policy thinking and development for social work across Ministerial portfolios. We look forward to working with the Scottish Government team as they move into their new roles.
Ministers have a new duty to set timescales for local authority assessments of people with terminal illness. This will be done through regulation. There is no detail yet about what the timescales might be.
A new digital integrated care record for those with health, social work and social care interaction. Again, no further details now.
When people move local authority, they have a legal right to a service at least equivalent to that they previously getting. Ministers will make provisions for this through regulations.
The SSSC gets additional powers to require information for its processes. This should help ensure fitness to practice cases are dealt with more swiftly
Carers and advocacy
Essential Care Supporters, created through Anne’s Law, establish the human right to visits for people in care homes more clearly although there is no national oversight of suspensions of care home visits. Redress will be through existing complaints procedures which we view as over reliant on individual capacity and knowledge of the system
Unpaid carers now have a specific legal right to sufficient breaks. Local authorities have a new duty to promote the take up of financial and other support by carers.
There are sections in the Act expanding access to advocacy and the provision of independent information and advice.
Social care, the market and future care needs
Ministers will issue ethical commissioning guidance and prepare a strategy on fair work. Hopefully this will support the workforce in the social care sector specifically.
Authorities that buy in services, will be able to decide to contract for services only with organisations that provide benefits for society or for the environment, that is organisations we might recognise as charitable or third sector. This might be an opportunity to begin to remove profit motive from the care sector.
Ministers must report projected care needs for the next 10 years and review the state of the social care market.
Before the final vote at stage 3, we sent a briefing to all MSPs on 6 June which said:
Demand for public services is on the increase and has been for some time in Scotland. The Feeley report in 2021 drew our attention to the issues in social care – to the need to ensure citizens across the country can get the support they need in ways that enable them to achieve their physical needs and their aspirations for a decent life wherever they are. The Care Reform Bill is now the vehicle by which we need to deliver our best shot at achieving this.
Social work is a profession currently in crisis. Scotland needs more social workers to meet increasing demand for our services. We need to create working environments and offer caseloads that enable social workers to do the prevention and early support work that our communities need and that enable social workers to stay in the profession, gaining the depth of experience and knowledge required to undertake this complex role. To this end, in this Bill, the creation of the National Social Work Agency and the statutory role of the Chief Social Work Adviser are key to the support and evolution of the profession.
The amendments that you and you colleagues have put forward for this Bill in themselves are laudable. Rights of access to services, enhancing people’s human rights, support for the carers who deliver, often to their own detriment, so much for those who need social care and the role of independent advocacy in ensuring the voice of those of us who need support can be heard cannot, and should not, be argued against. SASW supports the intentions of the proposed amendments.
However, what this Bill and its amendments clearly demonstrate is that the underlying problem all the way through our care system is lack of resource. Were resource available, most of these amendments would not be required because they form the basis of how public services should be. They also reflect the way social workers want to engage with people in Scotland, not just taking their human rights into account but actively defending them. Unfortunately, creating law on many of these issues may not result in services being delivered in the way the writers of the amendments might envisage. Legislation that increases expectations without assurance of resource to meet those expectations risks destroying trust between communities and services when they are unable to deliver. In our opinion, the majority of the Care Reform Bill and its proposed amendments may have little effect on the delivery of services, which are, on the whole, suffering from a shortage of resource rather than any lack of purpose, direction or ethics.