HEALTH, SAFETY AND WELFARE OF THE SOCIAL CARE WORKFORCE

Primary Author or Creator:
Kathy Jenkins
Publisher:
Common Weal
Date Published:
Category:
Type of Resource:
Policy Paper
Length (Pages, words, minutes etc...)
11pp
Fast Facts

The pandemic has shown how important and how vulnerable our health care workers are. The health and welfare of the workers is important. But so ar their work conditions, pay, job security, work patterns, and involvement in decisions on how care is provided.

More details
  • ― There is a well-understood set of criteria which are viewed as being key to the health, safety and welfare of care workers.
  • ― During the Covid crisis there is well-documented evidence of how poorly these criteria were properly ensured for care staff in Scotland.
  • ― There is an internationally defined and accepted hierarchy of actions to ensuring that staff health, safety and welfare is properly protected and this must underpin our approaches in future.
  • ― As well as these there are fundamental issues which must be addressed: pay, job security, training, work load and patterns, and the ability for staff to have a degree of control over their work and of influence on how care is provided.
  • ― These can only be properly addressed by ensuring that staff have the ability to have their voice heard through collective bargaining and unionisation.
English