Edinburgh and Glasgow’s city councils announced social care budget cuts last week which could lead to the overcrowding of hospitals, care homes, prisons, and morgues in disadvantaged areas.
The funding cuts were announced the same week the United Nations (UN) committee on the rights of disabled people, accused the UK’s social welfare and benefits system of violating the UN’s Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
The committees Chair, Rosemary Kayess, has suggested the UK government “devalues disabled people and undermines their human dignity.”
Age Scotland, a national charity for people aged over 50, has declared this a: “national scandal.”
Social care services provide financial, logistical, and emotional support to elderly people and people with learning disabilities, physical disabilities, and mental illnesses.
Regional services are often jointly funded by city councils, as well as the NHS.
In Edinburgh, social care funding is set and allocated by Edinburgh City Council and NHS Lothian.
The budget cuts announced in Edinburgh will result in the closure of care homes and will reduce the number of vital services available for the elderly and disabled people.
For example, a £1.4 million reduction in funding for charities and community groups was announced, as well as plans to permanently close Clovenstone and Ford Road care homes in the city.
Edinburgh City Council have said the funding cuts are necessary to address a £60 million budget deficit for the upcoming year.
In Glasgow, Glasgow City Integration Joint Board members have approved more than £25m in service cuts, with more than 150 jobs lost across health and care.
Charities, activists, and trade union representatives have spoken out against the funding cuts, expressing their concerns of the knock-on effect on other services (such as hospitals and A&E).
Edinburgh Trades Union Council secretary, Des Loughney stated that the cuts go against the Scottish Government’s commitment to “lessen health inequalities in Edinburgh and Scotland.”
According to disability rights activist Tom Shakespeare, Edinburgh and Glasgow’s budget cuts reveal a wider and institutionalised: “crisis in social care.”
The UK’s national approach to social care has been criticised by a UN Commission which was established after the UK Government was found guilty of systemic violations of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2016.
UN Committee member Professor Laverne Jacobs, a disability rights and human rights law expert from Canada, stated that evidence suggested a failure on the behalf of the UK Government to provide an adequate standard of living for people with disabilities, with a: “disproportionate” number of disabled people living in poverty across the country.
The director of Care Rights UK emphasised that “it is older and disabled people paying the price” for the UK’s failing social care sector.
“old couple dozing in the sun near the palace” by byronv2is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.