By Robert Kilgour, executive chairman of Renaissance Care (founded 2004), which currently operates 18 care homes throughout Scotland

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.

Sadly, I really do fear that a tsunami of care home closures is very likely to occur sometime during the second half of 2025.

The social care sector is larger than the NHS and if it collapses what will happen to our NHS?

The collapse of social care would lead to more NHS bed-blocking, more cancelled NHS operations and longer NHS waiting lists.

Post the recent and traumatic 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 urgently need is more funds being made available for front line services not more funds being spent on even more civil servants working on a Scottish Government fantasy pipedream project that increasingly fewer and fewer of the stakeholders involved support.

The plans for the National Care Service from the Scottish Government are currently as clear as mud! These plans 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+ Health and Social Care Partnerships (Integrated Joint Boards) and also, who will be on the proposed new boards and what powers will they have or are they planned to be just talking shops, rubber stamping Scottish Government Ministers views and decisions?

To date, it has been a case of trust us (Scottish Government) to work out and get the detail right later on in the process with little or no scrutiny or oversight involved while the estimated costs of the NCS just keep going up and up and up.

All of those involved in social care are being asked to take a huge ‘leap of faith', trusting the Scottish Government to get all the details right later on down the track when the service is in real crisis and urgently needs more funding today not tomorrow, sometime never.

The Scottish Government's recent track record on such projects is not good, for example, the ferry project to mention but one, but there are sadly countless others. I would not trust the Scottish Government to run me a bath let alone run one of my businesses.

Trade unions like UNITE and GMB Scotland, Scottish NHS bosses, COSLA (Scottish local authorities), care home and home care operators are all coming out against the plans as they currently are and it would be absolute madness to proceed with the Scottish Government's half-thought out and half-baked plans for the NCS.

When the National Care Service was first announced, I gave it a cautious welcome, hoping that it would lead to more and much needed front line funding for social care.

However, it seems that it has 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 over £28m to date and counting (recent FOI) while currently 2,000 patients are bed-blocking Scottish NHS beds waiting for appropriate community care placements to be suitably funded. This should all be about people not politics and about very vulnerable people that really 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.

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