Tag: social care

Crisis in Care—Another Edinburgh is Possible public meeting

Every cut in care makes the NHS bleed

Another Edinburgh is Possible is hosting an online public meeting on the crisis in care in Edinburgh on Saturday 4 March at 3pm. We’ll hear from

  • Nick Kempe on the the roots of the problems with social care in Scotland
  • a care worker
  • a nurse.

There will be lots of time for contributions and discussion.

Register for the Crisis in Care meeting

See the Crisis in Care Facebook event

Find out more about Another Edinburgh is Possible at anotheredinburghispossible.org

The Social Care Crisis in Edinburgh—public meeting on 6 December

Edinburgh Trade Union Council (ETUC) is hosting a public meeting on Tuesday 6 December 2022 from 6pm to 8:30pm. The meeting will be held with the Council Chamber, City Chambers, High Street.

We encourage everyone with an interest in social care and public services to attend—especially members working in this area and those who receive care in their family.

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SSSC fees update

As won by the strike action of August 2022, councils will now pay Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) fees for local government workers across Scotland. These are mandatory fees for workers in social care that must be paid each year, so this victory puts money back in the pockets of, often low paid, workers.

The SSSC are working on how

  • registration will work going forward
  • they will refund those that have paid since 1 April 2022.

We will update here as soon as we hear details of refunds. Read below for how registrations will work.

New registrations

You will still have to re-register each year, but you will not pay a fee. When registering online select the option ‘I work for a local authority (local council)’.

The MySSSC payment screen will soon encourage local government workers not to pay a fee. In future MySSSC will recognise that you are a local government worker and not ask for a fee.

SSSC won’t issue invoices for fees due in December. Instead, they will send an email advising they do not need to pay a fee.

Budget Day demo—united in our call to invest in Council workers and jobs

On Thursday, we braved the chill and snow to demonstrate outside the City Chambers in solidarity with fellow trade unionists, activists and concerned citizens as the Council met to approve next year’s budget.

Read the budget papers and watch a webcast of the budget meeting, which includes the full deputations summarised below.

The Council have delivered a balanced budget for 2022/23, thanks to an underspend in 2021/22 and a 3% Council Tax rise, however the forecast for the years following looks bleak, with a gap in 2023/24 of around £55m with this gap increasing around £25m each year thereafter. The Council have said there must be a ‘robust savings plan’—which we know by now, translates to more cuts.

The demonstrators sought to raise awareness of the impact of cuts and call for measures to tackle the crises we face today that will be worsened by further cuts and by failing to change how the Council delivers services. We need a shake up and we need it now.

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Low paid, overworked, undervalued—Audit Scotland’s findings on social care

Last week Audit Scotland published a social care briefing analysing the state of the sector and the challenges it faces. We encourage all staff in Health and Social Care to read this and provide a brief overview in the following article.

The findings confirm what Unite CEC Branch has long believed: that social care staff are low paid, overworked and undervalued, and that the current staffing crisis is not caused by external circumstances, but exposed by them. The cause of the crisis is historical poor treatment and undervaluing of social care workers.

The briefing raises further alarms about the marketisation of social care, which is particularly worrying as the SNP’s National Care Service (NCS)—or National Commissioning Service, as would be more accurate—is on the horizon. Proponents of the free market would argue that competition between companies increases standards and increases the range service users can choose from, yet the briefing reports with concern that

commissioning focuses on cost rather than quality. Competition between providers has been at the expense of collaboration and quality.

And later in the report

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Health and Social Care staffing crisis

Help us get through the pandemic by working in social care

Image by Ani Kolleshi, courtesy of Unsplash

This week the Chief Executive emailed all staff asking for volunteers to come forward to work in Health and Social Care to address the staffing crisis due to the pandemic.

It is vital that the Council can meet the needs of our most vulnerable citizens and it is in this spirit that the Council is calling on staff to fill gaps in home care and care home staffing.

The Council are also recruiting externally for roles in home care and care homes.

Working in social care

Read details of the crisis social care roles on the Council website.

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