Public spending cuts are driving frontline charities to the brink while risking some of the most vulnerable Scots, according to a coalition of care providers.
Rachel Cackett, chief executive of the Coalition of Care and Support Providers in Scotland (CCPS), fears the crisis is “beyond urgent”. She warns the care sector is on a precipice and is calling for ministers to introduce emergency measures.
She said the lack of investment in the sector meant many social care and charity staff are being forced to leave jobs they love to secure better pay. The coalition – which includes some of Scotland’s most respected organisations, like Erskine, Sacro, Barnardo’s Scotland and the Glasgow Association for Mental Health – said unprecedented financial pressures were driving many to the precipice.
The coalition has released a manifesto, Urgent Action for Urgent Times, but Cackett says calls for help have so far gone unanswered by ministers.
She urged Health and Social Care Secretary Humza Yousaf to intervene and introduce emergency support, adding: “We need this now. We are beyond urgent, this needs to be addressed. The problem clearly and obviously relates to funding.
“What our sector does is absolutely as vital as other parts of the system. We need you to talk to usabout how you will keep staff in charities able to work in communities across Scotland where we are needed the most.It’s really important that this sector is treated with parity and equity.”
The coalition’s manifesto calls for a range of measures including a funding boost to improve pay for workers, a six-month suspension of issuing of tenders for work to stabilise the sector and for Covid measures to be reinstated.
Its concerns are echoed by Cosla which represents Scotland’s 32 councils. The group’s leadership said it was braced for unprecedented cuts.
Cackett said: “The Scottish Government makes an allocation that’s passed out to integrated joint boards and then on to councils to commission services and most of the services provided by our members are commissioned services.
“This can relate to areas such as homelessness or children and families or older people. So if there isn’t enough resources going into the system, there’s not enough resources to have contracts that will pay people enough.
“That’s the situation we’re in. We keep being told that there is no money and I think what’s been particularly hard for the sector over the last three or four months are the pay awards that have been offered to a lot of other parts of the system.
“I have to be really clear that we do not begrudge that at all. People should be paid absolutely fairly for what they do and our colleagues in local government, the NHS and other sectors do an amazing job in terms of public service.
“But so do our members and so do their staff. It’s not been an equal playing field for a long time but it’s an even less equal playing field now for someone starting out in social care.”
News of the funding fears in the care sector came after plans for a National Care Service were hit by major costing fears. MSPs demanded revised proposals at the start of this month with a full rundown of expenses before plans progress.
The social care overhaul could cost as much as £1.2 billion. In the run up to the launch of the National Care Service in 2026, Cackett said the Scottish Government’s fair work guidelines – advocating for a decent standard of living and income, and security of contract – felt a long way off.
She said: “We’re a membership organisation of 91 of the big providers of social care and support in Scotland.
“That’s organisations that work with disabled people, people with learning disabilities, children, families, people who are experiencing homelessness and older people.
“It’s a whole range of types of organisations from the small to the really big and we work with them to make sure that their voice can be heard.
© Andrew Cawley“Given the dire straits we are in at the moment, providers are finding life very, very hard.
“It’s obviously been a really hard three years but we’re now entering a winter where in terms of money and resource and staffing, providers are really struggling.
“We spoke to a number of providers in autumn, just to take a bit of a temperature check and we found just over 60% of our providers were having to consider really tough choices.
“They were thinking about things such as do they restrict services? Do they close services? Do they change their staffing?
“At the same time, they are getting more work coming their way from people in communities who rely on our providers to help them when things are really tough. It’s an impossible equation.
“The biggest issue that our members were coming to us with is keeping and recruiting staff. A key part of that is pay. We have a lot of language around fair work but if you’re a worker, in social care, it probably feels right now that fair work feels further away than it’s ever been.”
The public sector is also struggling. Job losses in councils were deemed “inevitable” last week with services due to be cut unless extra cash can be found to meet a £1 billion shortfall.
Cosla fears that without additional cash from the Scottish Government, local authorities will struggle to deliver even basic but essential services. President Shona Morrison warned current government spending plans could see council services “either significantly reduced, cut, or stopped altogether”.
Cackett became chief executive of CCPS in July 2022 after working with charities on the National Care Service reforms and researching issues around pay and funding for third sector providers.
She previously worked at Samaritans as executive director for Scotland through the pandemic, supporting volunteers, staff, partners and people with lived experience to build the charity’s Scottish presence, secure a new self-harm strategy, and shape recommendations for suicidal crisis support.
She also worked in the health and care sector for 20 years with campaign and policy roles at Shelter, the Royal Voluntary Service and the Royal College of Nursing, where she led work on integration, NHS finance and health inequalities.
Cackett said: “The difference in salary for someone coming to work for a charity, a third sector charity, providing care and support is significantly less.
“We’re talking some thousands of pounds less than if you were in the public sector. For our organisations, finding and keeping staff is really hard. Without staff, there isn’t any social care.”
Cacket spoke out after the launch of her group’s manifesto which outlines an emergency plan to save the care sector.
The document stated: “The cost of living crisis is having a profoundly negative effect on our social care sector. This winter, the pressures faced by third sector providers and the people they support are genuinely unprecedented.
“Despite this, far too little is being done right now to ensure that providers can keep essential services running as economic shockwaves take their toll.
“The sustainable solution is long-term reform so that we can build a vibrant social care system that is accessible equitably to everyone who needs support to live the life they wish to lead.”
The manifesto demands parity in pay with the public sector while it says local authorities and the NHS need to stop recruitment campaigns which take social care trainees out of the sector to other public services.
Any new wave of the pandemic will also threaten the delivery of social care so providers need to swiftly reinstate support measures introduced during the pandemic, including financial support and access to PPE, and implement new infection control measures as scientific guidance changes, according to the manifesto.
Social Care Minister Kevin Stewart said: “The care provided by Scotland’s social care sector is invaluable which is why we have given workers in adult social care two pay rises in the last year. We were the first nation in the UK to introduce minimum hourly pay rates for adult social care workers and will continue to work with them to design the model for the new National Care Service together so we can be sure to put fair work at its heart.”
The warnings of a cash crisis in the care sector and local government come ahead of potentially further cuts by Scotland’s Deputy First Minister. John Swinney has already announced £400 million of cuts to frontline health and social care services this year to fund higher wage deals.
Cosla vice-president Stephen Heddle said: “Make no mistake, what we will now face is councils struggling to deliver even the basic, essential services communities rely on.
“The estimated £1 billion gap for councils in 2023-24 is the equivalent of the entire budget for early learning and childcare across Scotland or 17,500 teachers. A gap of this magnitude will have an impact on all our communities, with the most vulnerable suffering the worst consequences.”
One service provider warned that care services would “come to a halt” this Christmas unless more staff can be found.
Lynn Black, from the Love Group, which provides education and social care programmes, said snobbery and long hours were leading to care workers leaving the sector for better-paid jobs in retail and hospitality.
She said: “Care companies are going to the wall. They’re handing back packages, handing back care services.
“There are tens of thousands of hours of care waiting to be delivered that we can’t deliver because we can’t attract staff – it comes down to attraction and retention and offering benefits to staff.”
Public Health Scotland figures show a record number of patients had their discharge from hospital delayed. One of the main reasons they can’t leave is because social care packages are not ready.
Black added: “We relieve the pressure on the NHS to allow beds to be freed up. But in order for us to facilitate hospital releases, we need staff. If we can’t attract them in, we can’t retain them and we can’t deliver services.
“At a time when they’re already strapped, social care will come to a halt this Christmas. I think there’s a lot of professional snobbery, we need to go to schools and attract young people into the sector.”
Dr Donald Macaskill, chief executive of Scottish Care, said: “What we have now is not working.
“The way we manage and commission care is not working. All of us need to work together to design that future, but some of us are concerned if this is the best time to do it when social care is collapsing around us.”
The Charity
One of Scotland’s biggest children’s charities says rising costs and pressure on fundraising means only a fraction of vulnerable Scots in need can be helped.
Wendy Laing, assistant service manager with Aberlour, fears her team in Perth can only support one in four families in need.
The charity had to close its Urgent Assistance Fund to new applications from the end of July this year until late November.
“The pressures on matching fundraising with the serious demand for help from families in distress are immense,” she said.
“We desperately need to continue operating our Urgent Assistance Fund especially in cold and unforgiving weather where heat and food are essential for healthy survival. I work directly with families who need what many of us routinely pick up in supermarkets without a second thought.
“Those living in extreme hardship with empty cupboards, unable to put their heating on in freezing temperatures or buy children warm jackets and decent shoes are recommended by social workers and others for a one-off £349 grant.
“We can only help one in four. Some are on minimum wages in cleaning jobs or catering which don’t pay enough to feed and care for families.”
The charity brought cooked food to a family with no food and a basic supermarket microwave to heat it. A seven-year old boy in the house said: “You have made all my dreams come true. I would love hot food like everyone else’s.”
Aberlour has also helped families whose children have been forced to stay off school because their feet are blistered from wearing shoes two sizes too small.
“One parent fainted because they had not eaten for four days. Others sleep on mattresses on the floor because they cannot afford beds and a change of bedding is a luxury,” added Laing.
“We can understand the pressures on others to support when they are facing rising costs and bills themselves.
“One child’s eyes lit up when I took a package of toiletries to them as an extra surprise and they carried them around with pride, desperate not to lose their new treasures. That’s heartbreaking.”
You cannot drink from an empty well. We need action
by Anna Fowlie
It’s never easy running a charity and just as we emerge from the impact of the pandemic, we are now hit by an even harder blow in the shape of rising costs.
Charities come in all shapes and sizes – from big, national service providers and campaigners to small, local, community-run projects. They provide lifeline support for the most vulnerable in our society, and they also look after animal welfare, protect our environment and run the majority of arts and culture venues.
What they have in common is precarious income, constant uncertainty and rising costs not matched by rising income. Cuts to public services leave gaps which charities are expected to fill, with no thought to who is going to pay for them.
Research to be published next week shows that over 90% of voluntary organisations are experiencing rising costs. Goods and services, energy and staffing are the most significant.
We have seen energy costs for some charities rising by 500%. How can you cope with that if you’re reliant on public donations or fundraising? As the people charities serve are hit with increasing mental health challenges, are unable to afford food or energy, demand goes up. And the public’s capacity to donate money or time falls. It’s a vicious circle that shows no sign of letting up.
Around half of charities get income from public sector contracts or grants. You
would expect that to be more reliable than public donations. But delays, cuts and short-termism mean that charities are issuing redundancy notices, are struggling to pay their staff what they need to deal with the cost of living crisis, and some are even having to close their doors.
So what can be done? We have seen some charitable trusts increasing their grants to recognise the challenges faced by the charities they fund, but many more should follow suit.
There’s no silver bullet, but longer-term funding, timely funding decisions, and annual uplifts from Scottish Government and councils to keep funding in line with inflation would at least mitigate some of the problems. The rhetoric around how vital the sector is needs to be matched with urgent action. You can’t drink from an empty well.
Anna Fowlie is chief executive of the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations
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