Organisations representing Scotland’s independent care at home and housing support sector are appealing to commissioners to think ahead as they set care budgets for the coming year.

Chief officers are being asked to accept that social care staff need to be paid properly and to invest equally in services provided by outside organisations as they do in their own teams.

Scottish Care and UK Home Care Association (UKHCA) have written a joint open letter to the chief officers of Scotland’s health and social care partnerships, councils and lead agencies, asking them to make decisions that will allow the sector to be sustainable in the face of increasing demand.

The letter calls for service leads to be more strategic in the planning of services, and also to recognise that electronic call monitoring systems can be inflexible and punitive in the way they are being used, and incompatible with the delivery of person-centred.

The letter states:

‘The sector needs more than just the money required to be able to pay the Scottish Living Wage as happened in most parts of Scotland last year. There needs to be immediate action to collaborate with the social care sector to address the challenges.’

The authors, Karen Hedge, national director at Scottish Care and the UKHCA’s policy director, Colin Angel, say the letter is a critically timed call to address immediate and longer-term challenges for the sector, and to value and recognise the vital role which the homecare sector plays.

Karen Hedge says the letter comes against a backdrop of a series of changes in policy and practice that have resulted in increased costs for the delivery of services:

“Some of these decisions are positive such as paying our staff the Scottish Living Wage. Yet we also know that as our population changes, there are more people who need social care which means that the amount of money available to spend on social care is less.

“In an effort to save money, decisions have been made by those who fund social care which at times have made the situation worse. They are in the areas of planning services, supporting our social care workforce, funding services, and electronic call monitoring and billing for services.

“It is vital that those who fund social care take action and work with the sector to address immediate and longer-term challenges, and value and recognise the crucial role which the homecare sector plays.

“The impact of these challenges on a care provider’s ability to operate or to fairly employ their staff is critical.

“At worst, failure to act will significantly encroach on those who access care and support, affecting their wellbeing and ability to contribute to their local community as well as meaning that they need increased support from an already over-burdened NHS.”

In their letter, Scottish Care and UKHCA question how sustainable it is for some funding authorities to pay £15.65 an hour for care at home services when UKHCA has calculated the true cost at £21.99 – and when some local authorities are funding their own services at £45 an hour.

Meanwhile Scotland’s councils say they themselves are facing a real-terms cut in funding in the coming financial year.

In a statement issued by the local authorities’ organisation COSLA, council leaders said they were disappointed that the Scottish government’s budget settlement ‘only makes good the underfunding of new and existing commitments… and does nothing to address inflationary or demand pressures.’

COSLA says the settlement represents a 2%, £205m, cut in real terms in revenue funding and the organisation will continue to push for an additional 2% to meet inflation, a further 3% to make good previous funding cuts and the restoration of £117m to fund capital programmes.