Question reference: S6W-09256
- Asked by: Pam Duncan-Glancy, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
- Date lodged: 23 June 2022
-
Current status: Answered by Kevin Stewart on 12 July 2022
Question
To ask the Scottish Government how much of the funding that it has spent on the promotion of direct payments and self-directed support, since the Community Care (Direct Payments) (Scotland) Regulations 1997 came into force, has been distributed to disabled people’s support organisations, and how many such organisations have received such funding.
Answer
The Scottish Government are committed to continuing to improve the promotion, quality, and implementation of Self-directed Support.
Due to changes in SG accounting systems and SG Retention Policies it has not been possible to obtain details of all funding awarded since 1997. Since the Self-Directed Support Scotland Act 2013 came into force in 2014, Scottish Government has provided a total of £46.6m to strategic delivery partners which include Social Work Scotland, Inspiring Scotland, In Control, Self-Directed Support Scotland, The Alliance and Transformation a Funding to all Local Authorities. These Strategic Delivery Partners support the delivery of SDS and direct payments through, in excess of 1000, membership organisations.
It has not been possible to estimate funding spent solely on promotion of direct payments and Self-Directed Support since 1997. This is due to funding recipients not recording actual spend for direct promotional activities, however all funding recipients promote the use of direct payments and self-directed support in all activities funded. Therefore, as all the Self-directed Support Strategic Delivery partners support all people that require social care, the full amount of funding supports disabled people's organisations either directly or indirectly through our strategic delivery partners membership organisations throughout Scotland.
Promotion of direct payments and Self-directed Support has been different for each organisation and has taken many forms such as expenditure on communication, engagement with social work users and working with Local Authorities to raise awareness of available processes therefore making it difficult to define and determine exactly how much budget has been used towards it