This briefing summarises the most recent national data about adult residential care and home care in Scotland. It looks at trends in demand and supply, funding, unmet need and the shifting balance of provision based on reports from the Improvement Service and the Accounts Commission/Audit Scotland.
According to the Improvement Service, the social care sector is suffering from “longstanding structural issues such as chronic underfunding, workforce issues, system fragmentation and supply chain limitations”.
The market system of care provision and austerity economics are the root causes of these structural issues. However, in recent reports both the Audit Commission and the Improvement Service see the solution as being more of the same: stronger public sector intervention to sustain the market rather than action to reverse marketisation and privatisation and remove profit from care.