Tuesday April 13th 2021
I’d like to begin by expressing my sadness at the passing of the Duke of Edinburgh – a dedicated public servant. My condolences to Her Majesty the Queen and her family.
It’s Time to Care about Care
The quality of our social care system should be a key issue at this election. The speed with which the failings of our social care system were exposed last spring was ghastly. The Covid crisis didn’t bring about the crisis in social care, it was already there. It simply brought it to the top of the agenda. The challenge of Covid-19 has made the crisis in care even more acute.
The movement of people from hospital settings, without consultation and without being tested, into care homes to accommodate Covid patients was a human rights scandal. This contributed to the devastating reality of care homes becoming the epicentre of the pandemic and almost a third of deaths across the country being people from care homes.
Scotland’s social care workers have also been on the front line in the fight against Covid. Their commitment, alongside all our other front line workers to help keep us safe during this public health emergency has been heroic.
Scottish Labour has been calling for a National Care Service for some years now, a service that will include Local Government’s Social Care Staff as partners in the service delivery. It will put the dignity of individuals and the quality of services before profit. We must address the inequalities in the sector as it deals with the shortcomings highlighted in the recent Feeley Report, which I don’t think goes far enough.
Scotland urgently needs a plan to transform social care. Scottish Labour knows that urgent reform and investment is needed and that’s why we are working with the public to make our vision for a National Care Service a reality.
We don’t want to just talk about the problems, we want a plan for how things could be better.
Tweet Share on Facebook
