The social care sector in Scotland is currently running on fumes and is nervously balancing on the crumbling edge of a steep cliff, facing the very real prospect of tumbling over at any time, plunging downwards and being smashed to pieces on the sharp rocks below.
I fear that a tsunami of care home closures is very likely to occur sometime during the second half of 2025.
To date, it has been a case of ‘trust us' as the Scottish Government works out the detail later on in the process, with little or no scrutiny or oversight involved, while the estimated costs of the NCS keep going up
The social care sector is larger than the NHS and if it collapses, what will happen to our NHS? The collapse would lead to more NHS bed-blocking, more cancelled NHS operations and longer NHS waiting lists.
After the recent pandemic, the social care sector has now slipped back into its historic ‘Cinderella Service' role with the Scottish Government returning back to its long-held attitude of NHS first and social care second.
What we need is more funds being made available for frontline services, not more funds being spent on even more civil servants working on a Scottish government fantasy pipe dream project that increasingly fewer of the stakeholders involved support.
The plans for the National Care Service (NCS) from the Scottish Government are currently as clear as mud. They have been very short on detail and efforts at meaningful consultation with the major stakeholders has been extremely poor.
For example, what happens to the existing 30-plus health and social care partnerships (Integrated Joint Boards) and who will be on the proposed new boards and what powers will they have?
Or, are they planned to be talking shops, rubber-stamping Scottish Government ministers' views and decisions?
To date, it has been a case of ‘trust us' as the Scottish Government works out the detail later on in the process, with little or no scrutiny or oversight involved, while the estimated costs of the NCS keep going up.
All those involved in social care are being asked to take a huge leap of faith when the service is currently in a real crisis and urgently needs more funding today, not tomorrow, sometime or never.
The Scottish Government's recent track record on such projects is not good. I would not trust it to run one of my businesses.
Trade Unions like Unite and GMB Scotland, Scottish NHS bosses, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, care home and home care operators are all coming out against the plans as they stand.
It would be madness to proceed with the Scottish Government's half-thought-out and half-baked plans for the NCS.
When the NCS was first announced, I gave it a cautious welcome, hoping it would lead to more and much-needed frontline funding for social care.
However, it seems to have become an expensive cosmetic exercise that is mainly about imposing central control of Scottish government ministers over social care, a blatant power grab, taking decision-making away from local authorities, similar to what happened with Police Scotland and Ambulance Scotland.
It is in danger of becoming a very expensive white elephant, costing more than £28m to date and counting (according to a recent FOI) while 2,000 patients are currently bed-blocking Scottish NHS beds waiting for suitable community care placements to be properly funded.
This should all be about people, not politics, and about very vulnerable people that need our help and support.
It is very disappointing and is a real missed opportunity to do something meaningful and to make a real long-term difference to so many people's lives.
Robert Kilgour is founder and chairman of Renaissance Care
