BetterCareScotland
Surviving Scotland’s social care system!
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The Assisted Dying Bill served to remind us that successive Scottish Governments have failed to deliver health and social care outcomes which meet people’s needs and comply with Human Rights and Equality law.
The Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill second-guessed the country’s finest jurisprudential, theological, philosophical, and medical minds and the very ethos of Scots Law – and did so against the backdrop of a social care system in dire need of reform.1
It should have come as no surprise that an Assisted Dying Bill, no matter how ill-conceived, would find support from Members of a Parliament that opposed the concept of a National Care Service in Scotland.
In light of the predictable risks that the passing into law of the Assisted Dying Bill would have created,2 it is fortunate that the Bill’s fate was determined by logic and testimony based on personal experience rather than emotions since the Bill proposed giving a future Scottish Government the ‘nice-to-have’ freedom to make economic trade-offs which would transform an obligation to deliver good health and social care outcomes into moral dilemmas3 for both vulnerable4 citizens and healthcare professionals whose conscientious objections, based on religious or philosophical belief, would bring them into conflict with the law.4
The decision to reject the Assisted Dying Bill requires future Scottish Governments to acknowledge in everything they do that all people have the right to life and every life has equal value.
1 The Independent Review of Adult Social Care in Scotland, February 2021. 2 For good reason, assisted suicide in Switzerland is governed by the country’s criminal code. 3 A risk associated with ostensibly well-intentioned, but ill-conceived, private bills is the creation of perverse incentive structures which are, it seems, to be regarded as of no real consequence. 4 Without regard for their protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010.
The toxic combination of regulatory capture and ineffective monitoring by Councils means that defenceless children and adults, in residential care settings in Scotland, are at greater risk today of neglect and abuse, and less likely to be believed if they speak out, than ever before!
Until those who occupy positions of power face the prospect of being held to account for failing to ensure the safety and welfare of vulnerable people in Scotland, neglect and abuse and its sickening cover-up will continue, the quality of care will be driven further downwards and the risks will increase.
This is a true story!
It should be unthinkable in a PROGRESSIVE economy that the social care system would serve the self-interest of those exercising power at the expense of the SOCIAL CONTRACT and commercial interests at the expense of the TAXPAYER. But, as the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry is discovering for itself, REGULATORY CAPTURE is hard-wired into Scotland’s social care system. For good reason, REGULATORY CAPTURE is seen as “how the powerful and the insiders use regulation to scam the public” (Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life, Nassim Nicholas Taleb).
The danger that Scotland’s social care system puts defenceless people in when they are separated from family and friends, typically against their will, to be cared for in closed cultures by complete strangers and the predators the sector will always attract, cannot be overstated … rendering the Care Inspectorate’s complacent testimony to the Child Abuse Inquiry chilling in the extreme!
Data on Scotland’s broken social care system show that, when the exercise of unrestrained power in the wrong hands goes unchallenged, rules are broken with impunity, standards fall and things go badly wrong for the unsuspecting public.
The incentive to stonewall valid and legitimate complaints proves irresistible. The rule of law is replaced by the rule of lawyers. Information asymmetries are exploited. People close ranks. Regulation and public audits become increasingly superficial as the interests of oversight bodies come to depend on the system operating without openness, transparency or honesty.
Incompetence, negligence, the squandering of public money, corruption all get covered up. Toxic work cultures develop. For fear of retaliation, staff dare not blow the whistle. Morale plummets. Principled staff leave the sector. Performance deteriorates ever further.
The inevitable welfare and economic costs count for nothing. No-one is held to account. No lessons are learned.
Other key public services, better-led and held to higher standards – like education and the NHS – are brought to their knees by Councils with dystopian social care systems.
And, on it goes! In modern Scotland!
Wilful blindness to the neglect and abuse of children and vulnerable adults in residential care settings in Scotland incentivises risk-taking and leads to the stonewalling of complaints and victim blaming to cover up systemic incompetence, negligence and potentially corrupt practices.
The inconvenient truth behind Scotland’s claim to be a world leader in social care provision is that the country’s social care system could not be better designed to attract and accommodate abusers. In evidence to the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry, Scotland’s Care Inspectorate, and others with a statutory duty to protect the welfare of the vulnerable, unwittingly betray this grim reality by exploiting the very informational advantage which facilitates the cover-up of abuse … at a time when openness, transparency and honesty is needed. The true nature of the risks to which children – and other vulnerable groups – in residential care in Scotland are exposed today could not be clearer .
For many, whose lives have been shattered by abuse in residential care, which proper governance and effective regulation should have prevented, their only hope lies in the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry being the force for change that Scotland’s social care system desperately needs!
Subscribers’ Spring/Summer 2026 Newsletter
On and on it goes, the continuing meltdown at South Ayrshire Council which headlined our Autumn/Winter and Winter/Spring Newsletters – its causes and consequences and why calls for an Independent Inquiry have been resisted by an unelected Executive who remain in post despite the damage they continue to inflict and Councillors who have failed so far to hold them to account.
For twelve years, South Ayrshire Council has come top – that is, has ranked worst by far out of Scotland’s 32 locals councils – in performance metrics based on service users’ experiences and staff exit interviews. The latest incumbent as Chief Executive is uniquely-placed to show the sort of moral courage that the redoubtable Sharon Graham at Unite has in spades and take a principled stand against any perceived misuse of power with ordinary people’s money!
For non-subscribers, we outline below the Pandora’s box of issues that South Ayrshire Council’s stakeholders – contractors, bidders, commercial care providers, council tax payers, service users and their families and, of course, hard-working staff – have long faced, and taxpayers need to know about. It makes for grim reading!
At all Councils, the unelected Executive arm holds the levers of power – the information and the money – but, without good guardianship, an organisation’s only real Line of Defence against incompetence and corruption, unsurprisingly, you end up with an unsustainable governance model.
The blow-up at South Ayrshire Council was a long time in the making, the culmination of incompetent and negligent management, an absence of formal risk management expertise, ill-conceived reporting lines, ineffective operational controls, unmanaged moral hazard, perverse incentive structures, bad practice, conflicts of interest … leading to an ineffective Internal Audit function, a culture of cover-up, the stonewalling of complaints and sidelining of whistleblowers, compliance breaches of the Council’s duties under Freedom of Information and Data Protection law and a complete lack of openness, transparency and honesty … presided over by Councillors operating in the dark with, it seems, neither the skill nor the will to hold the Executive arm to account and without regard for how any of this impacts on minor considerations such as the quality of service provision, staff morale, democracy or the public purse!
BetterCareScotland research finds that suspected misconduct by South Ayrshire Council Executive Officers is not confined to the market for building contracts. For years, Executive Officers have stonewalled concerns about the economic interests being served by contracts for care services which expose vulnerable service-users to the risk of neglect, coercive control and abuse and female care staff to bullying by male co-workers, enabling abusers to remain in post, their offences going unreported to the Police and Disclosure Scotland and hellish care providers staying in business, their owners’ reputations laundered.
Economic trade-offs made by South Ayrshire Council, which put the commercial interests of care providers before the safety of service users and staff, breach not only every conceivable statutory duty of the council but also the principles of public life by which council staff and Elected Members are bound.
When Executive Officers use delegated powers to cover up the consequences of procurement decisions that confer no discernible public benefit; when they put self-interest ahead of their statutory duties; when Elected Members look the other way, it is clear that governance has broken down completely.
But, actively misleading the public and their elected representatives at any time, let alone when things go badly wrong and vulnerable people come to harm, points to a council in moral decline.
When everyone lies, the world gets darker. But, history shows that a lack of openness, transparency and honesty, when the social contract goes wrong, is unsustainable!
Allegations of misconduct by Executive Officers at South Ayrshire Council – remember, these are the people who hold the levers of power – are coming to light. There are rumours about who knew what and for how long about whom. And what’s being covered-up!
Following an exodus of Executive staff, there is a growing call for a wide-ranging and far-reaching forensic audit of the council’s procurement history and practices – and the automatic entitlement of Executive Officers to bloated public sector pensions!
This handshake on the cover of the annual procurement report is a bad look in any context in today’s age, not least when the Council in question stands accused of flouting public procurement and competition law and of stonewalling the public when the governance of procurement processes goes wrong.
South Ayrshire Council claims that, by outsourcing service provision, the council is released from all responsibility to service users, the taxpayer and all other stakeholders!
But, the law is clear: procuring bodies can outsource service provision but not and never their statutory responsibilities. Outsourcing creates risk and additional obligations, not fewer!
Also, in our Spring/Summer 2026 Subscriber Newsletter, we crunch the numbers you’ve given us to reveal …
… why Scotland’s Standards Commissioner needs to focus on substance rather than style!
… if Audit Scotland’s black box can distinguish between ‘Best Value’ and bad value!
… why social care will be the political issue for a growing constituency in Scotland in 2026.
… if North Ayrshire Council’s governance is an example of good practice, as the Accounts Commission claims – or if the Accounts Commission has created a hostage to fortune!
Subscribers, click here to tell us what you are looking for from the new intake of MSPs!
Love and Peace, as always!
Children and vulnerable adults who are sexually, physically and/or psychologically abused or neglected – in care homes, orphanages, boarding schools, young offenders’ institutions and other residential care settings in Scotland – find themselves facing people with no incentive to investigate crimes stemming from a failure to exercise diligence when delivering, procuring or regulating social care provision. By failing to act with transparency, openness or candour when things go badly wrong for defenceless people in residential care settings and refusing to investigate complaints, those in positions of power facilitate abuse and enable its cover-up.
There is no doubt that people with things to hide are unlikely to cooperate fully with an Inquiry which, were it to meet its remit, would expose the perverse incentive structures in Scotland’s social care system which enabled the cover-up of the child abuse the Inquiry is investigating and continues to do so!
Let’s be clear, those in positions of power in Scotland today, whose actions or wilful blindness contribute to the cover-up of abuse in residential care settings, are acting in their own self-interest, not the interests of the public. Until they are required to play by the rules, by which we mean follow their own policies, they will continue to cover up the abuse of defenceless people in residential care settings in Scotland which is increasingly regarded as state-sanctioned.
With plans for a National Care Service in Scotland scuppered by a Scottish Government cave-in to vested interest groups acting, ordinary people in Scotland, whose basic human rights are compromised by a social care system which purports to protect them, are pinning their hopes on the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry delivering a public good. In the context of its remit to people in Scotland, the Inquiry has subjected the operations and processes of the public and private sector bodies which covered-up the abuse of defenceless children in residential care settings in Scotland to a level of scrutiny which these bodies can normally avoid. Caught off-guard by the intellectual rigour of the Inquiry team, representatives from these bodies found themselves saying out loud what the rest of us have long known. But for the sickening truths that have been unfolding at the Inquiry, the desperate lengths to which public bodies go to defend their wilful blindness to the abuse of defenceless children (and adults) in residential care settings in Scotland, this deplorable chapter in Scotland’s story would be farcical..
The signs are propitious as the Inquiry chair, the estimable Lady Smith, and Senior Counsel, Andrew Brown KC politely and respectfully expose the risks of REGULATORY CAPTURE at the heart of Scotland’s dysfunctional social care system to which Holyrood remains wilfully blind. However, unless there is an iron fist in the Inquiry‘s velvet glove – unless the Inquiry recommendations spare no-one and identify how it can possibly be the case that abuse of defenceless children (and vulnerable adults) in residential care settings in Scotland goes unreported, undiscovered, and gets covered-up – then its recommendations will go the same way as the Feeley Review’s call for a National Care Service in Scotland.
No-one in Scotland was better placed than Derek Feeley to be aware of social care issues in Scotland. The Independent Review of Adult Social Care in Scotland, which he chaired, concluded in 2021 that people in Scotland have come to expect poor social care outcomes and that those who experience good outcomes believe they had luck on their side.
The Review spoke of “a chasm” between the aims of Scotland’s social care system and what it delivers in practice. But, the Review‘s failure – perhaps, its reluctance – to identify the causes enabled those with vested interests in preserving the toxic incentive structures that are hard-wired into today’s social care system to derail the Review‘s call for a professional and accountable National Care Service in Scotland which would operate in the public interest – and BetterCareScotland‘s own call for the Care Inspectorate to be replaced by a body with the risk management, regulatory, compliance, analytical and lay expertise and competent leadership that no professional regulator in any sector can do without.
In the words of Ellena, who was persistently stonewalled by Council staff, elected members and Scotland’s social care regulators after she was abused in a commercially-unviable care home for older people the owner of which, it transpires, is kept in business largely with public money:
I did not assume that life in a care home for older people would be as meaningful as the life I’d led or that giving up my independence would be without its issues. But, when taking my lead from Diana Athill, a contemporary who had thrown caution to the wind and taken up residence in a care home in 2010, I had expectations of a place befitting the price I was asked to pay and not the squalid, poorly-resourced, and (latterly) badly-managed place where I found myself. I could not have imagined that, in modern Scotland, a regulated care provider, with no demonstrable interest in care provision, would be able to preside over my neglect and abuse and have me declared insane like some latter-day Victorian husband. This in an age when, in wider society, a man who leverages power over women would be condemned rightly as predatory.
By failing to respond in a meaningful way to Ellena’s disclosures of abuse, the commercial interests of the care home owner were accommodated, his reputation was whitewashed and other vulnerable women would be abused in his care home by a man employed as a ‘carer’. To our knowledge, neither the Council in question, nor the Care Inspectorate nor the Scottish Social Services Council reported these offences to Police Scotland or Disclosure Scotland.
Far from being unique, Ellena’s experience of public bodies systematically and determinedly weaponising the system against her and her family members is commonly shared by those who dare to challenge the narrative when things go badly wrong with social care provision and explains why abuse goes unreported.
CLICK HERE TO READ EXTRACTS FROM ELLENA’S ACCOUNT OF HER EXPERIENCES IN RESIDENTIAL CARE
If you have concerns about social care delivery, provision or regulation in Scotland, BetterCareScotland can guide you through the process of drafting, submitting and, as is now the norm in modern Scotland, escalating your complaint. We may be able to lodge a complaint on your behalf.
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Increasingly, we hear from registered social services staff who dare not blow the whistle on poor, even corrupt, practices for fear of retaliation.
For the vicious circle of vested interests and perverse incentives to be broken and for the term ‘social care’ to mean what it implies, we must exercise our civil right to be heard. If you feel you dare not complain, let us know!
Scotland needs a National Care Service
In February 2021, the Independent Review of Adult Social Care concluded that a key determinant of social care outcomes for elderly, frail, and disabled adults in desperate need of care in Scotland is LUCK … and that people in Scotland have to fight their local authorities for their rights.
The Review varnishes the grim truth, but its findings reflect BetterCareScotland’s data and the experiences of our subscribers.
Scotland’s government promised to resolve these issues by replacing the country’s dysfunctional social care system with a fully-operational National Care Service by 2026, then reneged on their promise!
The ‘bad local authority’ playbook
This is a cautionary tale for those who imagine that local authority chief executives and social care bosses in Scotland, who fail to deliver good social care outcomes, will provide a remedy when things go wrong.
Our data show that local authority chief executives, who prioritise saving money over delivering good care outcomes, knowingly expose care users to risk and are incentivised to use any means at their disposal to silence those who reach out, reflecting their desperation to cover up operational issues.
Our subscribers see their experiences as evidence of a failure of the democratic process.
BETTERCARESCOTLAND TOOK ITS INITIAL INSPIRATION FROM A WOMAN WHO REFUSED TO BE STONEWALLED BY HER LOCAL COUNCIL OR GASLIT BY SCOTLAND’S SOCIAL CARE REGULATOR, THE CARE INSPECTORATE AND CONTINUED TO CHALLENGE THEM FOR COVERING-UP HER ABUSE IN A GROSSLY UNDER-RESOURCED INDEPENDENT CARE HOME FOR OLDER PEOPLE IN SCOTLAND.
SIX YEARS AFTER THIS REMARKABLE WOMAN FIRST SPOKE OUT, THE OWNER OF THE COMMERCIALLY-UNVIABLE CARE HOME WHERE SHE WAS ABUSED CONTINUES TO BE KEPT IN BUSINESS BY HIS LOCAL COUNCIL DESPITE 3 OTHER WOMEN BEING ABUSED BY A MAN EMPLOYED AS A CARER WHOSE CRIMINAL CONVICTION FOR ASSAULTING HIS WIFE SHOULD HAVE BARRED HIM FROM BEING EMPLOYED TO DO “REGULATED WORK” WITH “PROTECTED ADULTS”
AGAINST THIS BACKDROP, THE LOCAL COUNCIL, THE CARE INSPECTORATE AND THE SCOTTISH SOCIAL SERVICES COUNCIL, PUBLIC BODIES STAFFED PREDOMINANTLY BY WOMEN, CONTINUE TO WHITEWASH THE REPUTATION OF THE MAN WHO OWNS THIS CARE HOME WHOSE RECRUITMENT POLICIES LED TO THE ABUSE OF WOMEN HE WAS BEING PAID TO PROTECT FROM HARM.
BETTERCARESCOTLAND’S KATIE CARR HAS RAISED CONCERNS ABOUT THE CARE INSPECTORATE’S SEXIST HANDLING OF HER COMPLAINT ABOUT ITS WILFUL BLINDNESS TO THE RISKS TO WHICH WOMEN CONTINUE TO BE EXPOSED IN THIS CARE HOME.
THE WILFUL BLINDNESS OF UNACCOUNTABLE COUNCIL & CARE INSPECTORATE BOSSES ENABLES THE ROUTINE COVER-UP OF ABUSE AND COERCIVE CONTROL OF ELDERLY, FRAIL AND DISABLED WOMEN IN CARE HOMES FOR OLDER PEOPLE IN SCOTLAND. OVER TIME, THIS CULTURE OF COVER-UP HAS CREATED AND FUELED A VICIOUS CIRCLE OF PERVERSE INCENTIVES FOR THOSE WHO PROCURE, DELIVER OR PROVIDE SOCIAL CARE IN SCOTLAND TO PUT THEIR OWN INTERESTS AHEAD OF THOSE THEY ARE PAID TO PROTECT.
Women who reach out when they are abused in care homes for older people in Scotland are seen as a threat by the public sector bodies which fail to protect them from harm.
Against the backdrop of the Angiolini Inquiry into the abduction and brutal murder of Sarah Everard by a serving Metropolitan Police Officer in March 2021, the grim findings of which were published in February, Scotland’s Councils and the regulator of registered care services, the Care Inspectorate, continue to discredit women who summon up the courage to reach out when they are abused in under-resourced care homes for older people while whitewashing the reputation of the owners who are kept in business by their local Council.
The stonewalling, gaslighting and discrediting of women who complain takes many forms, from their social workers turning on them and behaving in a threatening and intimidatory manner. We have witnessed, in online meetings between social workers and women who refuse to be silenced, senior social workers announcing, “We are not here to discuss the Human Rights Act!”, and Councils’ in-house solicitors stoking division between family members and threatening to have Power of Attorney removed. Such grotesque practices will stop only when Scotland has a National Care Service as originally envisaged following the findings of the Independent Review of Adult Social Care in Scotland in 2021 and responsibility for social work removed from Scotland’s 32 local Councils. Until then, the Scottish Parliament must address the pressing need for verifiably independent and meaningful scrutiny of the operations and performance of public bodies with responsibility for procurement, delivery and regulation of social care services and staff and for staff with authority to exercise discretion in the investigation of disclosures of abuse to be personally accountable to a professional regulatory body.
In her maiden speech in the House of Lords on International Women’s Day on 8 March, Louise Casey read out the names of close to 100 women who were killed in the previous 12 months where the principal suspect is a man then called for “decent men” to support women in dealing with the scourge of violence and abuse perpetrated against women by men.
The “decent men” who founded the BetterCareScotland campaign, while fighting public bodies for answers when their own loved-ones were abused by the system when they spoke out, echo Louise’s plea. Over the years, we have witnessed the system deteriorate as people, coasting towards retirement, are appointed to lead public bodies in order to preserve the status quo and protect vested interests when root and branch reform is needed.
Today, our focus may be on getting answers to a self-evidently flawed and unsafe Decision of the Scottish Social Services Council which exposes vulnerable women to the risk of abuse in their own homes by permitting a middle-aged man with anger-management issues and a criminal conviction for assault on his wife in a public place to provide care in the community without supervision having abused 3 vulnerable women in a care home for older people, a decision arrived at on the strength of a reference provided by the care home manager who hired him despite his criminal conviction for assault which debarred him from working in a care setting with vulnerable adults.
Tomorrow, we may be exerting pressure on the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman to investigate a legitimate complaint which an SPSO official dismissed on the strength of the Care Inspectorate’s mischaracterisation of the facts without providing evidence. Our data indicate that, when public bodies in Scotland make seriously bad mistakes which they cannot defend, they can expect the SPSO to take them on trust when the complaints are escalated. No amount of “decent men” will change these perverse hard-wired structural practices overnight.
In BetterCareScotland’s experience, although necessary, it is not sufficient of itself for “decent men” to join the fight when public sector bosses cannot be held to account when they get it wrong nor sanctioned for abusing their position and weaponising their informational advantage against women who complain.
This is not new! The authors of the books below that we read and re-read, have been raising the alarm, some for decades, only for their words to fall on deaf ears. We must all redouble our efforts.
We revisit Helena Kennedy’s ‘Eve Was Framed’ 32 years after its first publication!
Eve was Framed
Helena Kennedy dedicated ‘Eve Was Framed’ to “Women in Prison” an astonishing thirty years before vulnerable women, in independent care homes for older people in Scotland, were kept in solitary confinement in their small bedrooms as a means of control for over two years for the commercial gain of care home owners who feared the reputational consequences from deaths of residents from Covid-19 … and thirty years before women who objected to this inhumane treatment (we would argue, torture) would be branded ‘Adults With Incapacity’ making them prey to coercive control by hard-pressed staff whose employers expected them to bend the rules and cut corners in order to ‘cope’ and a Care Inspectorate which lacks the expertise and the will to spot the red flags of neglect and abuse.
THE EVIDENCE IS UNEQUIVOCAL – COUNCIL & CARE INSPECTORATE BOSSES ARE NOT HELD TO ACCOUNT OR SANCTIONED FOR STONEWALLING COMPLAINTS BROUGHT BY WOMEN WHO ARE ABUSED IN CARE HOMES FOR OLDER PEOPLE IN SCOTLAND – NOR ARE THEY INVESTIGATED FOR WHITEWASHING THE REPUTATION OF THE CARE HOME OWNER. TOGETHER, WE CAN CHANGE THIS.
INEFFECTIVE OVERSIGHT OF COUNCIL AND CARE INSPECTORATE OPERATIONS, OUTCOMES & GOVERNANCE MEANS PUBLIC SECTOR BOSSES ARE BEING TAKEN ON TRUST & GET OFF SCOT-FREE!
BY FAILING TO ACT WHEN THINGS GO WRONG, SCOTLAND’S CARE INSPECTORATE AND SSSC DO MORE HARM THAN GOOD, STUDIES SHOW. PEOPLE IN SCOTLAND WOULD BE BETTER OFF WITHOUT THESE BODIES!
SCOTLAND’S HIDDEN SHAME!
COUNCILS in SCOTLAND are KNOWINGLY EXPOSING SCOTLAND’S UNSEEN & UNHEARD to THE COST-OF-LIVING CRISIS!
There are few people in Scotland more exposed to the spiralling costs of basic goods and services than the elderly, frail and disabled adults whose local authorities employ social workers for the express purpose of denying them the care they cannot do without and forcing them to find a way to pay for it themselves. To Scotland’s shame, Council chief executives and social care bosses deny these vulnerable people a voice when things go badly wrong! In any other setting, this abuse of power would be acknowledged as COERCIVE CONTROL.
SOCIAL CARE in SCOTLAND is about ECONOMICS, NOT CARE!
The economic, social and health consequences facing those being denied the social care they desperately need and their (mainly female) family members, forced out of the workforce to care for them, barely register in official statistics and yet, EACH AND EVERY WINTER, they face the prospect of ‘STARVING OR FREEZING’ and the rest of the year of, somehow, SCRAPING BY.
The latest UK Consumer Prices Index (UK CPI) headline inflation rate shows that prices for goods and services in the UK continue to rise with price increases for basic foodstuffs, on which the poorest and most vulnerable depend, remaining stubbornly sticky.*
With current energy prices beyond the means even of some middle-income earners, it is anyone’s guess how those forced by their local authority to pay for their care will cope in the months ahead. And with the certainty that global oil prices will be pushed up by escalation of tensions between Iran and Israel, there are worrying times ahead.
In correspondence with BetterCareScotland, Scotland’s former Minister for Mental Wellbeing & Social Care, Kevin Stewart, seemed unable to engage on the issues. Time will tell if his successor, Maree Todd, can better meet the brief!
*Source: Office for National Statistics
COUNCIL SOCIAL CARE POLICIES are bad for the NHS!
When Council bean counters deny people the Free Personal Care they need, the foreseeable effects on health and welfare have predictable consequences for the NHS’s limited resources and hospital waiting lists and, ultimately, comes at far greater cost to the taxpayer than any savings made by Council social care bosses at the expense of the care needs of the elderly, frail and disabled.
So, we see exponential rises in the incidence of crisis hospital admission and delayed discharge from hospital of patients assessed as medically fit for discharge when social care plans are not in place. And the NHS being exposed to the risk of litigation when, as we increasingly find, social workers coerce patients into being discharged to care homes – and denied their rights to family life – instead of delivering care plans for their safe return to be cared for in the community.
SCOTLAND NEEDS a NATIONAL CARE SERVICE!
With Scotland’s social care system beyond repair and pulling down with it our struggling NHS, the Independent Review of Adult Social Care in Scotland, chaired by Derek Feeley, led to calls for a National Care Service for Scotland.
A centrally-managed social care system, overseen by Government Ministers, would replace Scotland’s current broken social care system which is run by 32 disparate local Councils staffed by successive chief executives coasting towards retirement and social care bosses of questionable pedigree with no desire to change the status quo when dynamic and ambitious leadership is needed more than ever.
And yet COSLA, Scotland’s local authority umbrella body, together with public sector trades unions and some political parties in Scotland – unlikely bedfellows, some of them, but all with interests vested in the status quo – despite acknowledging that all is not well with Scotland’s social care system, are incentivised to deny people in Scotland something better, a social care that delivers on its claims!
Scotland’s National Care Service cannot come soon enough!
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Scotland’s Care Inspectorate reported to the SPSO!
As some of the risks created by unaccountable managers in Scotland’s public sector are gradually uncovered by the Scottish Covid-19 Inquiry, the Care Inspectorate’s flawed processes and systematic failings, which expose vulnerable residents in care homes for older people in Scotland to the risk of neglect and abuse and hard-pressed staff to exploitation, are under scrutiny by the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman (SPSO).
Initial investigations by the SPSO into two separate complaints about the Care Inspectorate acknowledge that there are operational issues from which the Care Inspectorate must learn and an apology of sorts was extricated from the Care Inspectorate Chief Executive, but the complaints have been referred to the Ombudsman herself as SPSO staff took on trust information from the Care Inspectorate which misled them and compromised their investigation. This, at a time when the Care Inspectorate should have self-reflected and responded to the SPSO with openness and candour.
The matters on which the Ombudsman will pronounce relate to the routine disregard for the Care Inspectorate’s own Procedure by senior Care Inspectorate staff and members of its Executive Team when facing complaints about the Inspectorate’s failure to identify the risks to which residents and staff in care homes for older people are exposed … something we should be able to expect the Care Inspectorate to get right! In effect, the complaints cast doubt on the Care Inspectorate basic competence as a social care regulator.
The backdrop to one complaint includes the Care Inspectorate’s use of threat to stonewall a family’s concerns that the Inspectorate’s performance and decision-making created a conflict-of-interest in the investigation of disclosures of abuse in a care home for older people in South Ayrshire* which was self-evidently grossly under-resourced.
A poll of ‘BetterCareScotland‘s subscribers finds that more than 92% of over 800 people who responded fully expect the Ombudsman to close ranks with the Care Inspectorate.
This result is unsurprising as it reflects a general lack of confidence in Scotland’s public sector bosses who are not held to account and face no sanctions when they get things badly wrong and service users are harmed.
Time seems to stand still at the SPSO: its complaints process currently takes around 8 months from acknowledgement to final deliberation. The mere process of allocating a complaint to a complaints handler takes around 4 months. By contrast, this initial step at the UK Competition and Markets Authority, to which a complaint of “aggressive commercial practices” at yet another care home in South Ayrshire* – an ‘award-winning’ care home at that – was completed within a week!
* South Ayrshire Council scores badly in BetterCareScotland‘s analyses of complaints handling when things go wrong with social care delivery or provision, with evidence that South Ayrshire Council creates a perverse incentive for its favoured care home owners to put their own commercial gain ahead of the welfare of their residents and staff..
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Cutting corners & bending the rules
When the priority of a local authority chief executive is to pay as little as possible for care, providers of good quality community care are driven from the market, leaving the authority unable to deliver social care to people in desperate need.
The ‘solution’ – creating QUEUES for care – points to a chief executive whose priority is to save money instead of delivering social care even if the inevitable decline in the standard of care that local authority bosses can deliver exposes care users to the risks of bargain-basement care provision.
These perverse consequences for people needing care in Scotland indicate that adult social care is a low priority for local authority chief executives and that social care bosses act in their own self interest by accommodating autocratic chief executives instead of delivering care outcomes that meet people needs.
Scotland’s Government is clear: local authorities should be OFFERING funding via Self Directed Support if they cannot DELIVER the care that people need. This helps to ensure that SOME are not more EQUAL than OTHERS!
The ‘bad social worker’ playbook
BetterCareScotland’s data show that people in Scotland discover only when it is too late that they were misled by social workers they were expected to take on trust.
Social workers work largely unsupervised and are not held accountable when things go wrong. We find that they target the most vulnerable, going to great lengths to deny elderly, infirm, and disabled adults in Scotland the social care they desperately need and to deprive people of their statutory entitlement to care in the confidence that local authority chief executives and social care bosses will silence those who reach out when things go wrong.
Our data show that the nature of the concerns raised by care users or their family members – those best-placed to be aware of the issues – and their determination to get at the truth are closely related to the level of hostility they face when they reach out and that local authority attack dogs, at the direction of the chief executive, retaliate in order to stonewall people who are, in effect, WHISTLEBLOWERS.
To see why delivery of social care is not safe in the hands of Scotland’s local authorities, …
Scotland’s local authorities and Care Inspectorate get things wrong every day of the week in the delivery and regulation of social care, despite the data they generate suggesting otherwise. For no mechanisms are in place to hold them to account for people’s poor social care outcomes or for failing to identify and manage the risks of their operations. It is only a matter of time until something goes so badly wrong in a care setting that people start questioning why Scotland’s social care regulator turns up only when it is too late.
THE SOLUTION LIES IN GOVERNANCE & ACCOUNTABILITY
The proposed National Care Service for Scotland together with the Royal College of Nursing Scotland’s tireless engagement in the formulation of the Health and Care (Staffing) (Scotland) Act, 2019 offer hope. Both are informed by those best-placed to be aware of the issues in the delivery and provision of care and to be able to monitor – with a vested interest only in reforming the system!
JOIN BETTERCARESCOTLAND & HELP TO SHINE A LIGHT ON COUNCIL AND CARE INSPECTORATE COVER-UPS OF ABUSE!
This is AUTOCRACY, not DEMOCRACY!
It’s time for Scotland’s democratically elected Council officials to represent the people and hold AUTOCRATIC chief executives and social care bosses to account for social care policies and practices that are designed to save the Council money at the expense of the vulnerable, and for stonewalling people who expose Council malpractice when things go wrong..
How local authorities are managing their queues for care in practice is anyone’s guess, but, it is reasonable to assume that some queues for care are longer than others, and that some will be less orderly than others just as some local authority chief executives and social care bosses will be more perversely incentivised than others to act in their own self interest instead of delivering good social care outcomes.
But, ALL local authority chief executives in Scotland are taken on trust and demand to be so.
From the experiences of our subscribers, it is clear that AUTOCRATIC local authority chief executives subvert the DEMOCRATIC process by choosing what to report and how! And, what to cover up when things go wrong.
It is no surprise that people in Scotland see this as a betrayal of the social contract.
Our Care Inspectorate is ‘so last century’!
It is hard to imagine a regulator providing less meaningful oversight of Scotland’s social care system than the Care Inspectorate.
Our data show that the philosophy, operations and methods of Scotland’s Care Inspectorate are ‘so last century’ that it exposes the vulnerable to risk.
By way of example, during the pandemic, the Care Inspectorate produced fortnightly reports for Scotland’s Parliament from which nothing could be deduced, comparisons be made, nor conclusions be drawn from one report to the next.
At a time when Scotland needed key facts and reliable hard data that could be eyeballed by hard-pressed decision-makers, the Care Inspectorate provided bed-time stories.
However, these fortnightly reports give an insight into the Care Inspectorate’s operations and mindset. They reveal an inconsistency of approach on inspection visits, a common complaint of care home managers.
This is evidence of ill-discipline which no regulated sector should observe of its oversight bodies. We see this ill-discipline as a direct consequence of the Care Inspectorate’s reliance on “soft skills” which, by their nature, create bias and subjectivity where certainty is key.
A NATIONAL CARE SERVICE FOR SCOTLAND
Lack of meaningful oversight has allowed Scotland’s social care system to be brought to its knees by unelected local authority and care inspectorate bosses acting in their own self interest at the expense of those they are paid handsomely to serve.
Only by seeing vested interests designed out of the new National Care Service and all necessary safeguards put in place for the protection of care users and their family members and friends – and, indeed, Scotland’s social workers and other public, private, and third sector staff who dare not blow the whistle – will people’s faith be restored in the DEMOCRATIC process.
TELL YOUR STORY AND HELP THE NATIONAL CARE SERVICE MEET THE NEEDS OF EVERYONE IN SCOTLAND!
The Independent Review of Adult Social Care was a welcome first step on the road to a National Care Service in Scotland. But, just as the unvarnished testimonies of victims of horrific war crimes of the Second War led to the development of modern human rights law, BetterCareScotland believes that only by putting on record the shocking truths behind the Review’s findings, by listening to the people whose voices are silenced by their local authority and Scotland’s Care Inspectorate when things go wrong, will the National Care Service in Scotland be able to deliver on its promises to people in Scotland.
Read extracts of “One Woman’s Fight to be Heard” by clicking here.
LOCAL AUTHORITY CHIEF EXECUTIVES WHO PRESIDE OVER QUEUES FOR CARE ARE DISCRIMINATING AGAINST SCOTLAND’S MOST VULNERABLE!
If you or someone you know is being or was denied social care or social care funding, let BetterCareScotland know. We will help you to hold your local authority to account!
If your local authority stonewalled your concerns when you reached out, we will help you get at the truth!
JOIN FORCES & ASSERT YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS!
By design or outcome, local authority policies and practices impact negatively on the lives of people in Scotland without their consent.
Join BetterCareScotland and demand the entitlement to Free Personal Care or Self Directed Support your social worker is being paid to deny you. Hold your local authority accountable for the arrears of your unmet social care funding.
Question the right of your local authority to dispense largesse with your modest life savings! Challenge the chief executive and social care bosses who covered up your disclosures of abuse in the care home, to which they directed you. Demand the answers you need to make sense of how they treated you when you reached out!
Were you a community carer whose employer was forced out of the labour market by local authority bosses? Did bullying social care bosses bring your social work career to a premature end? Have you had to leave the job you loved to provide care for a family member or friend solely because they were put in a queue for the care that the local authority had an obligation to deliver? How has this affected their and your finances and family life? How has this exposed you to the cost of living crisis?
JOIN US TODAY! MEMBERSHIP IS FREE!
Everyone in Scotland should wish to see Scotland delivering on its claims to a world-class social care system. But, in today’s Scotland, public bodies are not held accountable for failing to deliver good care outcomes – that is, if they deliver care at all – or for stonewalling those who reach out when things go wrong, for failing to fully investigate disclosures of abuse or for covering them up which knowingly exposes vulnerable service users to risk and staff to exploitation.
If you or a family member or friend were failed by a local authority or Scotland’s Care Inspectorate when you expected their support, get in touch with BetterCareScotland and tell us of your experiences.
If you were silenced by your local authority or the Care Inspectorate when you reached out after experiencing neglect or abuse in a care home for older people in Scotland, get in touch with BetterCareScotland and HAVE YOUR SAY.
ANNOUNCE IT TO THE WORLD!
Perhaps you are a local authority social worker or a staff member at the Care Inspectorate who cannot realistically blow the whistle on the culture of your workplace. Are you a social worker who has been employed to save the local authority money by delaying care need assessments or by denying people their statutory rights. If so, get in touch with BetterCareScotland – anonymously, if you prefer – and let us know the tactics your local authority or the Care Inspectorate expects you to use to exert power over vulnerable service users.
If the care home owner who employs you expects you to cut corners or bend the rules to cope, GET IN TOUCH with BetterCareScotland. Having a mortgage on a care home should not be regarded by anyone as a get-rich-quick scheme but BetterCareScotland knows of care home owners with neither a background in nursing or care nor any perceivable commercial acumen who know how to game the system when their commercial gambles fail to pay out. Hard-pressed staff in Scotland’s care homes for older people are in a greater bargaining power than they know. You can contact BetterCareScotland anonymously using the contact form below by completing only the ‘Message’ box.
Are you a care home owner or manager who took the time you express your doubts about the ability of Scotland’s Care Inspectorate’s to regulate the social care sector only to find that your views were not represented by the Health and Sports Committee of Scotland’s Parliament when it met on 25 August 2020 to determine “How well is the Care Inspectorate fulfilling its statutory roles?” and that the committee paid mere lip-service to the proposition?
BetterCareScotland is here to publicise, not moralise!
We will protect your information and will not share it with others.
Your information is valuable.
BetterCareScotland welcomes your information.
Together, we will campaign for an enlightened National Care Service for Scotland.
If you wish to remain anonymous, please complete only the ‘My message’ box below and tell us how Scotland’s social care system failed you or your family member or friend.
Your information will help to ensure that Scotland’s local authorities and its Care Inspectorate are held accountable for actions and decisions which put people at risk in their own homes and residents and staff at risk in care homes for older people.
Your information will inform BetterCareScotland’s analytical research
Be involved!
Help to hold Scotland’s public bodies to account!
Love and Peace!
Thank you for your response. ✨
