A charity boss is urging people in receipt of social care in Scotland to rethink how their support is organised to protect themselves from future emergency cuts.

It comes as a report highlights the ‘direct and detrimental’ effect that care cuts in the early stages of the virus had on thousands of disabled and older people in Scotland.

In some areas changes came in ‘overnight’ with little consultation, leaving family members to pick up the slack and some people without support.

In response to the findings from the Scottish Human Rights Commission, Colin Millar of the Scottish Personal Assistants Employers’ Network (SPAEN) is urging people to switch to getting their care payments directly.

SPAEN represents disabled people who use direct payments to employ personal assistants themselves.

Currently the majority of nearly 60,000 people who get homecare have their support organised by the council.

But under Self-Directed Support, social care users can choose to take more control over their care, including the option of having their care budget paid to them.

“I’ve said before that, from the many conversations and enquiries I and SPAEN had, that people felt ‘forgotten’ and ‘abandoned’, particularly those using a Direct Payment to commission and control their own care and support,” Colin Millar said.

“Ironically, these people were the least affected in our experience as they had complete control and were able to operate flexibly and nimbly to the circumstances.

“I would repeat my call to have anyone and everyone using social care to review and consider whether moving to a direct payment or Individual Service Fund held independently of the social care provider or local authority council would protect them against these kinds of acts should the pandemic flare up again.”

Mr Millar told healthandcare.scot such a move would “immediately and irrevocably ensure the rights of people to self-direct their social care support regardless of the wider environment”.

He added: “Anyone reading this report and many of the case examples that its uncovered should be distressed at how our fellow citizens were ‘abandoned’ during this pandemic.

“These are real people, each case covered in this report is a person, an individual, somebody’s loved one. 

“And this is only a snapshot, there will be many more individual experiences that haven’t been captured but are equally harrowing and alarming.”

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