Social services
After education, social services and housing are the highest spending departments in councils. The sector has seen substantial growth in recent years, much in private and voluntary organisations, and social enterprises working alongside local authorities. The work of social service departments with children and families, with the elderly, and in community care, makes an important contribution to the goals of social inclusion and the re-generation of communities. These services, together with the critical linkage to community health (q.v.), underpin the fabric of society. In particular, a major societal change being faced by Scotland is an increasing elderly population with increasing expectations for public services and formal support due to the potential reduction in informal care (by unpaid carers). Implications include how to maintain service quality (maintaining people at home, fast and local access to services), the economic costs of provision, and the environmental implications of increased mobility as institutional care reduces and more services are provided in the home.
Yet how to set out a social services "contribution to sustainable development" has been seen as difficult because the social policy aspects of sustainable development have often been taken forward separately from the economic and environmental ones. Social inclusion is rarely treated as integral to sustainable development. The suggestions for action below are therefore more tentative than in other policy areas, such as transport, where the agenda is well established. The emphasis is on joined-up service provision, consistent with the agreement between NHS Boards, Councils and the Scottish Executive to support outcomes driven joint performance management approach to health and social care provision. In a number of areas, Community Health and Social Care Partnerships have been established to underpin the governance and management arrangements required to deliver this shared agenda.
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| Paths to Improvement include: | Policy | Being Implemented | Outcomes |
Do those engaged in social services have access to, and are they supported by, other parts of the council (and its community plan partners) in
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| Are social services engaged in regeneration projects, drawing on their understanding and knowledge of communities? | |||
| Are improvements to diet, local sourcing of fresh or organic food, better handling of waste and more energy efficient transportation of meals encouraged (drawing on parallel work in education departments and the health service)? | |||
| Are 'travel to care' miles optimised, including sharing with NHS transport: reducing the length of journeys made by both care workers and their clients to access facilities, whether day care and/or care in their homes? | |||
| Are there facilities to recycle and re-use specialist equipment? | |||
| Is there support for care homes and other care facilities which encourages their energy and resource efficiency (just as authorities will be doing for their own buildings)? |