Scottish Care at Home

SCAH will ask for an immediate review of procurement processes for care at home and housing support which will include training and guidance for commissioners, longer-term contracts and a national contract framework.

The Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) has set out its vision for a competent, confident and safe workforce.  Codes of practice have been introduced, qualifications for housing support staff have been agreed, and the register may open in 2009 for this group. SCAH has highlighted that many providers do not have separate housing support and care at home staff and is now leading the debate in respect of the qualification level and registration of the care at home workforce. SCAH will soon commence a workforce project to help inform registration. 

Providers face real hardship in implementing the future training and registration requirements due to cost pressures and contract prices which do not allow employers to train reward and develop staff.   There is an inequitable approach by councils to the staffing costs of private organisations in comparison with staff employed “in-house” by the same council authorities.

SCAH will ask for a national review of the cost of Care at Home and Housing Support services, with particular emphasis on appropriate rates of pay and conditions of service for all levels of staff which will include funding for registration, training and development for the workforce.

Evaluations of recent tenders have placed an emphasis on reducing cost, these evaluations being made from tenders assessed on the paper submissions of company management policies and procedures.  This is a contradiction to the vision set out in Changing Lives for individual personalised services.  The emphasis must shift to choice, quality and outcomes.

SCAH will ask for a review of commissioning, the development of a quality framework for all tenders and contract awards based on the principles of Changing Lives. To deliver on the best value agenda this framework must be inclusive and applicable to all services, regardless of who provides them.

Scottish Care at Home seeks to highlight the contradiction of the commitment nationally and locally towards Home Care and the patterns of expenditure, contracts, partnerships and services that appear to move in completely the opposite direction. SCAH call for ‘a full audit of the funding needs and of the resources currently available for community care in Scotland’ as there is no understanding of the relationship between the level of national resource allocated to community care and the level of demand for services.

In summary, SCAH, with its partners, will seek a major national review of arrangements for the funding and delivery of all social care and support services. The time is right for social care and support services to be the focus of major governmental review and reappraisal. Changing Lives has helped us to identify what we should be providing and what is now urgently required is further work to identify how to provide it, in partnership.

SCAH hopes to respond on behalf of members to all relevant policy consultations undertaken by the Scottish Government and other key agencies. Members will be invited to become involved in the drafting of responses through the relevant contact.

SCAH is now also with increased visibility represented on a number of advisory groups, reference groups, forums and committees set up by the Scottish Government, the Care Commission and others. Click here to view the current list of groups on which SCAH has a place.

• Care Commission National External and Quality Consistency Forum
• Workforce data/workforce Intelligence Planning Group
• Dumfries and Galloway Homecare Options Review Group
• CoSLA -Free Personal Care Implementation Group
• Perth and Kinross Providers Forum
• Scottish ‘Alliance’ of Independent Providers