Question reference: S6W-02492
- Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
- Date lodged: 25 August 2021
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Current status: Answered by Kevin Stewart on 25 November 2021
Question
To ask the Scottish Government, in advance of the development of a national care service, whether it will provide additional funding for health and social care partnerships' recruitment campaigns, including to fund initiatives in attracting new staff that have been deemed successful in other sectors.
Answer
On the 5 October, the Health Secretary announced our £300 million NHS and care winter package.
We announced funding of:
- £40m for ‘step-down’ care, so that hospital patients can temporarily go into care homes, or can receive additional care at home support;
- £62m to maximise the capacity of care at home services;
- Up to £48m to increase the hourly rate of frontline adult social care staff to at least £10.02;
- £20m to enhance Multi-Disciplinary Teams, so that more social work assessments can be carried out, and to support joint working between health and social care.
This new funding will support increases in social care capacity in the community and in primary care.
As set out in the announcement, £62 million for 2021-22 has been allocated for building capacity in care at home community-based services. This is recurring funding intended help to fulfil unmet need, and deal with the current surge in demand and complexity of individual needs, also helping to ease pressures on unpaid carers.
On the 8 November we launched a further national marketing campaign to attract more people to the sector. We are doing things differently to previous campaigns, focusing on social media, a younger target audience, and we are working with schools and colleges, and linking to the medium term work we’re doing with the SSSC and NES on career pathways and learning and development.
We have approved funding to extend the MyJobScotland recruitment website to all third and independent sector organisations until March 2022, which will mean that all social care vacancies can be advertised on one platform at no additional cost to providers.
We are also working at pace with SSSC and NES to develop a national induction programme to support new entrants into Adult Social Care.