Welcome to the October Blog.
This month, I felt it was important to respond to recent announcements about sleepover support by the Scottish Government and Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership. You may well have seen comment on this in the press and on social media.
The Scottish Government has announced that social care staff providing overnight support will be paid the national living wage for sleepover hours. The City Council is considering a revised funding offer to service providers (organisations such as Fair Deal) within Glasgow.
Glasgow City Council has also announced that going forward they will adopt a comprehensive change in overnight service provision, aiming to replace sleepover support with alternatives offered by technology and waking night staff by 2019. This will mean the development and expansion of projects like that which Fair Deal undertook earlier this year with SOL Connect; projects which explore how we can use technology in order to enable people to live independent lives.
I am aware that these announcements have the potential to cause concern amongst staff and people supported by Fair Deal. In the immediate future, it will mean a rise in the hourly rate for sleepover. In the long term, it will mean a fundamental change in how overnight support is provided: staff may not be employed to provide sleepovers; waking night staff will be employed to respond to support issues through the night within a certain area (this might for instance be through a responder service organised across Glasgow); and people who have previously relied on sleepover support may have to adapt to new models of support provision. I would like to assure you all that Fair Deal is working closely with the relevant people and organisations to protect the rights and well-being of both the people we support and of our staff.