When the Scottish Government said last month it would aim to routinely test all care home staff for covid-19, the precarious financial position facing workers – many of whom did not get anything more than statutory sick pay from their employer – was laid bare.

“People speak about a race to the bottom in social care – something I disagree very profoundly with because I don’t think anybody, least of all in our sector, has been racing to the bottom,” says Annie Gunner Logan – Chief Executive of the Coalition of Care Providers in Scotland (CCPS), which represents not-for-profit and voluntary care organisations.

“I think we have been dragged there.”

Since the late 90s there has been a degradation in pay and conditions for many working in social care, she explains – much of that due to “a kind of fiesta” of public services being tendered on the open market.

In this model care services became business opportunities, marking the end of any parity in conditions and pay between public sector staff and everyone else.

“People with support needs became commodities which were then to be bid for in tendering exercises.

“The public procurement system in my view is structurally incapable of evaluating quality and therefore the whole thing became price-led,” says Ms Gunner Logan.

“When you are in a price-led competitive market, and when up to 85% of your costs are workforce costs, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’s going to happen.”

“In order to survive and compete and continue delivering you need to cut costs and, if you are going to do that, you cut workforce costs because they are your biggest.

“If anybody thought they could operate a price competitive market without it being price-driven then, that makes you scratch your head a bit and wonder where they've been all this time.”

None of this should be news to anybody though, she says – it is an issue CCPS and trade unions have been campaigning on for many years.

Momentum has grown in recent weeks behind calls for collective bargaining in the social care sector as a way of improving wages.

But a lack of funding from the public institutions commissioning care in the private, third and voluntary sector, means pay parity between these sectors is still some way off, Ms Gunner Logan says.

“Collective bargaining would be wonderful if it meant all social care staff were getting the same pay and conditions as public authorities but we would absolutely need the money to do that.”

“…We have the ear of people now I think in a way we didn’t before and that’s really important, but I think there’s a huge risk if the political instinct is to impose greater central control over everything as a solution.”

Earlier this week the CCPS lead cautioned against a rush to nationalise services in the wake of covid-19, telling healthandcare.scot “glib solutions” to problems we do not yet fully understand must be avoided.

The Scottish Parliament’s health and sport committee inquiry into adult social care – due to take evidence in April – is delayed till later this year.

Reading back through her organisation’s submission to the committee’s call for evidence earlier this year, rather than seem trivial compared to life in a pandemic, the issues CCPS raised then are “hyper-relevant” now, Ms Gunner Logan says.

“I really hope that the committee picks this up again as the crisis recedes and it can be refocused around what we have learnt during this pandemic.

“The third sector and not-for-profit providers have been absolutely magnificent in all of this and what I think is important is that we need to do the right thing by them in any system that we take forward and reflect their experience.

“These are the organisations and the people who have risen to the occasion so we need to learn from them. They have responded magnificently and been innovative in the way they deliver care, and they have done all of this despite the obstacles in their way.”

 

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