Living wage pledge for social care staff is welcome, says Martin Sime, but how it has been pushed through raises some worrying issues.
Let’s not forget the really good news thatmillions of pounds have been put on the table to enable 40,000 care workers to get the living wage.
This is a fantastic commitment to our workforce and to the anti-poverty cause. It should also bring to an end the two tier workforce and the discriminatory way in which local government looked after their own, often at the expense of others.
The deal is far from done though and seems to have leaked out prematurely. The devil may well be in some of the detail.
What about children’s services? Will all third sector care be covered, not just new contracts? And what expectations are there behind the ominous expectation that our sector would meet “its share of the cost”?
In any grown-up partnership there would be disagreements and the occasional row but the underlying commitment would endure
Martin Sime, SCVO
This last issue begins to expose a rather large elephant in the room - should charitable funds ever be used to subsidise public service contracts? Whatever happened to the principle of full cost recovery?
The biggest problem though is about how this was done and what it says about the relationship between government and the third sector.
There has been a worrying tendency of late - around European funding and in employability in particular - to consign voluntary organisations to the role of just being providers, there to deliver whatever is decided and with all the commercial disciplines that would apply in the world of business.
Our aspirations are different. A partnership between sector and state would pool knowledge and resources from both parties towards getting the best outcomes.
We would be deeply involved in service design; consortia and added value would be welcome; an issue like the shared ambition to pay the living wage would be agreed in advance.
As in any grown-up partnership there would be disagreements and the occasional row but the underlying commitment would endure.
This is the time to be clear about our expectations to be treated as a partner, to be properly involved across the design and delivery spectrum and to be treated with respect by our government colleagues.
In the run up to the elections we should pin our politicians down on this issue.
Martin Sime is chief executive of the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations.
