Adult social care workers in Scotland are to receive at least £9.50 an hour following agreement between the Scottish government and local councils.

Staff will receive the Real Living Wage of £9.50 an hour from May, backdated to April.

It is being presented as the first step in a series of commitments to implement the recommendations of Derek Feeley’s review of adult social care, including a pledge to draw up plans to remove non-residential care charges “as soon as possible”. 

More than £60m has been set aside by the government for the uplift to wages.

The policy, first introduced in 2016, has been praised widely but there has been criticism of how long it takes cash to get to frontline workers, leading to a quicker process being adopted during the pandemic.

The announcement comes as one health and social care partnership warns that government funding is not covering the wage increases.

Papers for a meeting of Edinburgh Integration Joint Board state funding is “well below the costs of implementation and discussions are continuing nationally in this regard.”

Questions have been raised in recent months about whether the living wage is a sufficient recompense for the work social care staff carry out.

Scottish Social Services Council head Lorraine Gray queried whether the living wage was still too low for work that can be physically and emotionally demanding, often carried out over unsociable hours.

Health Secretary Jeane Freeman said today: “Social care workers do a critical and invaluable job and they should be paid fairly for it. The Scottish government want Scotland’s social care services to be high quality and consistent for those who use them and also for those who deliver them.

“Derek Feeley’s independent review of adult social care set out clearly the need for better recognition and treatment of the, largely female, workforce, describing this as a key issue of equality and gender fairness, as well as an investment in critical service provision. The Scottish government agrees with those conclusions.

“This funding will help support a move to an ethical approach to commissioning which recognises the economic and social value of the work that staff in social care do, and that decisions must be about more than just price.”

Read more: Contract to streamline digital care support; Irons: Care review offers fix for funding tensions; Analysis: The care for a £15/hr social care wage; Councils justify paying themselves higher are rates

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