Scottish Government publishes social care plan
Failure to tackle health/social care divide effectively has been a serious problem for years
The Scottish Government has revealed a staffing plan for health and social care services, which the health secretary said is the first of its kind in the UK.
Under the plan, which was published yesterday, the Scottish Government will look to recruit another 375 wholetime equivalent (WTE) district nurses by 2024 – which it hopes will boost the number of people receiving care at home and free up hospital resources.
There will also be an increase in mental health officers by more than 8 per cent and 60 more training places for clinical psychologists.
The plan was developed in partnership with local authority body Cosla and will include a 5 per cent increase in student nursing places next year. A new service will also be created using £600,000 of government cash to train radiologists in mechanical thrombectomy – which removes blood clots. The training service is already being undertaken at NHS Tayside but will be rolled out across the country. Health secretary Jeane Freeman said: “This is the UK’S first integrated health and social care workforce plan and it will be invaluable in helping us to anticipate and respond to the changing and growing demand faced by our health and social care services.”
For far too long, too many people have been falling through bureaucratic cracks in the system of health and social care.
While the 2014 Public Bodies Joint Working (Scotland) Act sought to integrate these two services, progress to date has been limited. For example, in September it was revealed that there had been 124,000 delayed-discharge days in NHS Lothian – days when a patient stayed in a hospital bed despite being well enough to leave.
One of the main reasons for this regrettable situation is that the patient needs some form of care at home that has not been arranged.
This unacceptable inefficiency is a serious drain on NHS resources but also a blight on the lives of the people concerned. Who among us wants to be stuck in a hospital when we could be at home?
And for anyone doubting the importance and scale of the issue, public spending watchdog Audit Scotland warned the NHS in Scotland would remain “financially unsustainable” without greater focus on the integration of health and social care in a report in October. Therefore the Scottish Government’s “integrated health and social care workforce plan” – said to be the first of its kind in the UK – is a welcome attempt to bridge the remaining gaps.
As part of the plan, the Scottish Government aims to recruit 375 district nurses by 2024 to enable the number of people receiving care at home to increase, freeing up hospital resources. The number of unfilled vacancies in the health service should add a caveat to that goal as should Brexit, with concerns about the ability to recruit EU nationals, who currently make up 7.3 per cent of registered nurses in Scotland.
But, at least steps are being taken and Scotland has a plan – although it does come at least a year late. As Scottish Conservatives’ health spokesman Miles Briggs pointed out “perhaps if the Nationalists had acted sooner, we wouldn’t be facing this current crisis”.
A year-and-a-half on from her appointment, health secretary Jeane Freeman is still relatively new in the job. Fixing the NHS’S many problems is not to be rushed. However, last month the Scotsman warned Freeman would not last long in the post unless she was urgently exploring ways to improve the NHS. Time will tell whether this is a step forward or an exercise in papering over the cracks.