From BBC Scotland today
Lindsay McCurley from Glasgow is a single parent carer. She looks after her teenage son Nathan, who has autism. She is among thousands of people across the UK who struggle with trying to care for a relative long-term while also trying to stay in paid employment.
But now a change in the law, due to come into force on 6 April, means people who care for relatives outside of work can take an extra week of unpaid leave every year. The Carer’s Leave Act, which will apply across the UK, allows employees with long-term care commitments to take five additional days off annually. These can be taken as half days or full days, as long as they provide employers with a few days’ notice.
Lindsay said the change will make it easier for people like her to get back into the workplace.
In more than six hundred words about a UK Government initiative of limited generosity, there’s not one about what is happening in Scotland.
From 2019:
I missed the Fostering Network’s State of the Nation report in February 2019 despite, I feel sure, blanket coverage by our MSM. It was worth reading and reporting as it contains a number of statistics suggesting foster carers in Scotland are treated better than their counterparts in non-Scottish regions.
Here are the highlights:
Only 41 per cent of foster carers say that they will continue to foster for ‘as long as I am able’. This sentiment was highest in Northern Ireland, at 46 per cent. When it comes to uncertainty about when they will stop, Scotland is lowest here with only 19 per cent of foster carers replying: “I don’t know”, compared with the overall UK figure of 25 per cent. (11)
This is weirdly worded: ‘Scottish foster carers significantly more likely to foster as long as they are able.’
There is a clear difference between foster carers’ perceptions of support from their supervising social worker (70 per cent saying excellent or good) and the fostering service in general (only 53 per cent saying excellent or good): Scotland and Northern Ireland foster carers were more positive about the support from their fostering service in general, with 61 and 62 per cent respectively describing it as excellent or good. (14)
However, when it comes to the child’s social worker, the corresponding figure drops to only 58 per cent, a reduction of four per cent since 2016. We would like to see children’s social workers have much better training on foster care so that they are better able to understand the role of the foster carer. The picture is slightly (sic) better in Scotland here, with 63 per cent saying that the children’s social worker treats them as part of the team. (17)
In November 2022, it was the same deliberate blindness to Scotland:
At 06:30am, BBC Scotland announced:
The cost of living crisis has left many unpaid carers feeling invisible, undervalued and under pressure.
Cut to the Director of the Carers Trust Scotland, Louise Morgan, who opened with a fact (alarm bells):
In Scotland we are slightly better off because there’s a carers allowance supplement.
By the 07:30 report, she had gone.
Reporting Scotland had dropped the story.
Or this in 2023:
Leading charities have praised the SNP’s introduction of a minimum standard national allowance for foster and kinship carers to support them caring for the children and young people they look after. The payment is set to benefit more than 9,000 children, through £16 million from the Scottish Government.
Following the SNP Scottish Government’s announcement of the new Scottish Recommended Allowance, Kinship Carers UK welcomed and said “it’s wonderful to see that Scottish Government are supporting their #kinshipcarers”.
The payment was also praised by Fiona Aitken from Adoption UK Scotland who said they “look forward to seeing the impact of this on our community of carers” as well as Angie Gillie the Executive Director of Association for Fostering, Kinship and Adoption (AFKA) Scotland, who said “we welcome a national and consistent approach to supporting families and in #keepingthepromise to Scotland’s children and young people.”
Individual carers on Kinship Carers UK’s advisory group also underlined how significant they believe this announcement to be, with one carer saying they felt it was “great news and…shows our voices are being listened to now.”
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Kinship carers are motivated by a sense of love and compassion, or, at least by a sense duty, towards the person for whom they care. Often and partly as a result of being a carer, the carer often has a low income and, where this is augmented by paid employment the employment is often low paid and with relatively poor working conditions.
There are circumstances when the carer is conflicted because circumstances relating to the cared for person, mean that the carer has either to make arrangements, if possible, for the cared for person to be looked after or to take time out from employment, and forego income, in order to deal with the situation. But, because of the conditions of employment, by taking time off, the carer might find that employment is terminated or, in the case of ‘zero hours’ contracts is offered work, less often.
The provision being reported positively by BBC Scotland, is, indeed, a gain, but, it does entail loss of income, although no threat to employment.
Or, does it? The carer has to give ‘some advance notice’, which is a gain of sorts, but if the employer knows the person is a carer and can request further leave, albeit with some advance notice, the employer might still be tempted to offer less hours to a carer and thus affect income.
The key issue – for me – is income. If there were a better kinship carer’s allowance then the pressure on the carer to work would be less. However, for some carers having work to go to provides respite from caring duties and provides social contacts and emotional benefits. Work has social and emotional benefit in addition to income. Being able to take additional unpaid leave without threat to employment security can be of value to the carer.
So, having a higher level of carer’s allowance plus more secure employment, with guaranteed hours is also essential.
But, by the baleful logic of our right wing politicians and their media propagandists, people are inherently apt to take advantage of such situations and be less prepared to seek work or to be less reliable employees. It is predicated on a brutish concept of human beings – especially the proletarian hoi polloi. And, therefore, they have to ‘incentivised’ to work by making welfare payments low and working conditions precarious. By such jaundiced logic, offering five days additional unpaid leave is incredibly ‘risky’ for employers because they will probably be taken advantage of.
Alasdair Macdonald.
LikeLiked by 4 people
To qualify for EngGovs’ very generous (not!) Carers Allowance a person has to care for minimum 35 hours per week and no holiday from caring at all, else you lose your CA, it’s a whopping £76 pw. I have no idea how anyone can be an unpaid carer and do other work aside anything else it’s bloody exhausting caring for family at home. ScotGov top up CA a couple of times a year with a few £’s it helps pay the bills. Unpaid carers save the economy/public purse £billions per year.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Aye, and a quite spectacular demotion of the article by Ian Hamilton, even by James Cook’s dubious ‘standards’ https://archive.ph/XNgwz…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Kinship payments mean less children have to go into care, they can remain among family. A 40% drop in children in care under SNP Gov. Educational grants and loans for people coming from care. No council tax and affordable housing. There are benefit payments for those with disabilities or additional needs. A easier shorter form to fill in, in Scotland
LikeLike
The BBC would have you believe we should be enternally grateful for the kind generosity of the Uk Gov to show we are far better together…. not.
LikeLiked by 1 person
O/T
Apparently Keir Starmer has declared that he took ‘decisive action’ in respect to cutting ties with this ‘Labour candidate that was formerly selected by Labour for the Rochdale By-Election…..
But he didn’t ……did he…..as yesterday morning shadow Labour ministers were out defending the candidate stating he had apologised for his remark (thus just Move On says Labour)…..then by evening he, the candidate, was out as Labour removed their support for him as their candidate…..Frontbenchers Lisa Nandy and Anneliese Dodds had been out campaigning for Mr Ali at the weekend, and shadow minister Nick Thomas-Symonds was defending Labour’s decision to back him on Monday morning…..oh dear oh dear….another tangled web etc etc….it was reported that Mr Ali made his initial remarks at a meeting of the Lancashire Labour Party soon after the attacks..…He told the meeting: ‘The Egyptians are saying that they warned Israel ten days earlier… Americans warned them a day before [that] there’s something happening… They deliberately took the security off, they allowed… that massacre that gives them the green light to do whatever they bloody want” ….yet Nandy and Dodds were out campaigning for him at the weekend and Thomas-Symonds was defending him yesterday morning……..
Now irrespective of the latest developments in yet another Labour circus of Horrors via some NEW remarks having come to light from this candidate in respect to him stating that apparently he “blamed Jewish media figures for fuelling criticism against a pro-Palestinian Labour MP” (i.e. him referring to Andy McDonald who was suspended last year by the Labour party)….that for Labour was the ‘straw that broke the Camel’s (Labour’s support) back’.
So surely with Starmer being declared as the champion of New New Labour’s fight against (supposedly) ridding the party of anti Semitism…… then considering Ali’s initial remark…… was that in itself not deemed to be sufficient justification for Starmer & the Labour party to then distance themselves from him via that remark alone.…why then did they instead choose to soldier on and retain him as their candidate…would it be because in them initially tactically choosing Mr Ali as their candidate for that constituency they then assumed that would be perceived by Muslim voters in Rochdale that somehow Labour were not too Pro Israel thus they, Labour, then assumed they would ultimately be victorious in this By-Election….well that has backfired has it not…..as they, Labour, are now caught very much between a Rock and a hard place (of their own making BTW)…BLOL
So is this ‘Decisive action’ that Starmer states he supposedly took just Keir Starmer’s version of revising/rewriting history where his New New Labour fiction apparently replaces actual facts……so what else is he and his Labour colleagues lying about….look to Scotland and hear more lies via Labour…..both via accusations against the SNP and too promises of ‘Change’ and a ‘Fresh start’ being promoted with their party as the next UK Govt…..alas facts however dictate NO “Change” and NO “Fresh Start” via New New Labour but just a continuation of the lies , bad policies and cronyism etc that we have all come to expect and suffer under via the Tory UK government !
Vote SNP in the next GE or suffer the consequences of what will happen as a result of your VOTE if you do ‘lend’ your vote to Labour in Scotland in the next GE…..( they did after all show us WHO they really were in 2014 did they not….looks as if they, as a party, have not ‘changed’ or made any ‘fresh start’ in trying to be a different or better type of party from the party they were in 2014………..
NMRN
LikeLiked by 2 people